


Being Vulnerable (Not Untouchable)

by sweetNsimple



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Attempted Murder, BOW Chris Redfield, Body Image, Bottom Chris Redfield, Bottom Leon S. Kennedy, Canon-Typical Violence, Chris Redfield has tentacles, Chris has hemipenes, Consentacles, Developing Relationship, Discussions of mpreg, Double Penetration, Eventual Smut, Exophilia, F/F, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Hemipenes, Hopeful Ending, Human/Monster Romance, Hurt Leon S. Kennedy, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Infected Chris Redfield, Kidnapping, Kink Negotiation, M/M, No actual mpreg, Oral Sex, Post-Resident Evil: Vendetta, Romance, Size Difference, Size Kink, T-Virus (Resident Evil), Top Chris Redfield, Top Leon S. Kennedy, Trans Leon S. Kennedy, Vaginal Sex, let me explain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:08:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 52,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27960533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetNsimple/pseuds/sweetNsimple
Summary: "What if they were right? What if Leon was going to walk out of this airport, drive to Zakopane 21 miles away, hike through Tatra National Park, creep into the recently uncovered research facility at the lake floor of Morskie Oko, and find Chris Redfield as the monster the BSAA had said he had become? What if Leon came this whole way, not to retrieve the man he had admired and respected for twenty years, but to put him down like a rabid dog?"~::~After a mission gone wrong, Chris is presumed infected with a newly synthesized variant of the t-Virus. DSO agent Leon S. Kennedy is sent to Poland by request of the BSAA to bring the captain back or destroy whatever is left of him. No mission to save Chris Redfield is complete without Claire and they become tangled in one family's plot for revenge. Is it too late for happy endings? Or just the beginning of one?
Relationships: Leon S. Kennedy/Chris Redfield, Rebecca Chambers/Claire Redfield, Sherry Birkin/Jake Muller
Comments: 32
Kudos: 44





	1. Mission Parameters - The Inconceivable!

**Author's Note:**

> First and foremost, please let me know if there are any tags that are missing. I was possessed by this story idea for an entire week and have written more than 50,000 words for this, which is more than I have written in... a long time, honestly. A lot goes on and I try to write it like an RE game, but I'm not THAT good.  
> Second of all, please let me know if Leon is represented correctly. I am NOT trans, but I love trans Leon and he deserved more representation. I am working off what I have learned from my friends and from research.  
> EDIT (12/10/2020): I added some more tags and got rid of some tags, and also edited the summary. I understand that this fandom isn't big on giving reviews, but I was kind of hoping for more feedback when it came to this story. If you read this story, could you please give me some feedback? Is it awful? Is it good? Do I use the word 'but' too much? Is Leon unrealistic? I am panicking over here. The story already has over a hundred hits but only three reviews. Should I have more warnings? Do I have too many tags? Are my notes at the beginning of each chapter too long? What is it? Please tell me.

With Nadia needing medical attention that went beyond Rebecca’s abilities with a first aid kit, and the rest of them needing looked at for various reasons – Chris had had to push Leon’s shoulder back into place all while casually discussing how two of his fingers might be broken, like a fucking psychopath that didn’t feel pain – a hospital visit was their first stop. D.C. called ahead and landed them at the Southhampton Hospital a stone’s throw away from the Francis S. Gabreski Air National Guard Base (ANGB), and still perilously close to the carnage of Arias’s crimes. Leon almost asked to be put back in the Rocky Mountains, remembered what had happened to his hotel, and decided to stick along for the ride. He had grabbed his bags before he left anyway. For two weeks away from home, he had packed one duffel bag.

They deposited Nadia and Rebecca at the front desk and then were themselves ushered over to a seat to be checked out. Chris had _actually_ broken his fingers, but he insisted that the staff take care of everyone else first. Other BSAA agents from New York City were limping in and Chris could handle the pain.

D.C. stayed long enough to make sure Nadia and Rebecca were being taken care of and that Chris _would_ be taken care of before giving his farewells. He was bone tired and ready to sleep for a decade. It was also getting crowded in the waiting room. Leon and Chris gave their own goodbyes.

With D.C. gone, silence descended for a few minutes, only broken by the whimpers and chatters of bruised and tattered agents around them.

“We haven’t done this in awhile,” Chris said at last.

Leon raised an eyebrow at him. “What? Hang out at a hospital?” That was a regular occurrence for Leon, actually.

“Just… hang out. No hospital involved. Has to have been at least a decade since we so much as grabbed a beer together.”

“I don’t think we drink beer to socialize anymore so much as to cope,” Leon reasoned. He was speaking from experience.

Chris snorted humorlessly. “You’re onto something with that.” He speculated for a moment. “You know what I’ve been doing recently? In the downtime I get?”

“ _You_ get downtime?”

“I’m surprised too, trust me. You know what I do?”

“What do you do, Redfield?” Leon entertained the older man. He did miss this. The few times they got together did seem to be to save the world, and they always butted heads on how best to do it. Leon was a loner and Chris was a leader. They had managed alright this time around, he thought. Not smooth in the beginning, not great in the middle, but they had scraped together some good by the end of the day. Hundreds of people were still dead, others injured or in critical condition, and the property damage had to be catastrophic… However, they did eventually stop Arias’s plan _and_ they saved Rebecca – a bonus. That was two wins right there.

Leon was sore and damaged, ribs possibly bruised and Chris had reset his dislocated shoulder in the chopper, but he felt good about their accomplishments overall. He’d had much worse results.

Chris grinned playfully. “Claymation movies.”

Leon stared at him blankly. “What?”

The larger man outright _laughed_ at him, that asshole. “Your face right now!”

“So, you’re joking?”

“No… No, I’m not.” Chris was still chortling. “They’re just… good. Clean. The most terrifying movie I’ve seen so far is _Coraline_.”

“Isn’t that the one with the buttons?”

“If you want to be really vague about it, sure.”

“… Claymation movies. You? I would expect… action. Drama. Horror.” Leon scrutinized him closely. “Probably romance.” Chris sputtered. “Claymation, though?”

Chris was unrepentant, incapable of being embarrassed. Leon wasn’t aiming to embarrass him, so that was good. He just… didn’t understand.

“Those others are actually the movies I’m trying to avoid,” Chris admitted softly.

Leon glanced away, understanding. Their lives were already packed full of action and drama. From what Rebecca had recounted in the chopper, hands clenched in her lap, Arias had wanted her to replace his wife. Who needed more drama than that? And horror? They were regularly hunted down by monsters and chasing after more.

The more Leon thought about it, the more he realized some Claymation might be the sort of stuff he should be watching instead of bitterly analyzing old zombie movies with a whiskey bottle in hand.

“Even romance?” Leon asked. “You?”

“Can’t think of anyone I hate enough to bring into this life.”

“Pick and choose someone already in the life, then,” Leon reasoned like Chris was a dumbass. And he was. “I know your options are not limited.”

“Says the guy who regularly goes dancing with his lady love on missions.”

Leon grimaced. “Not anymore.”

The problem with Ada Wong was that he could never tell if she actually cared about him or cared about what he could do for her. After China, he just… had let them grow apart. It wasn’t all her fault; a genetic duplicate of her manipulated by Simmons had been at play. And yet, Leon had just barely managed to get his and Helena’s identities back after the fiasco and it had left him indifferent; definitely exhausted. Excitement at seeing her had turned into warning bells going off in his mind, a tired voice groaning, _‘Shit’s about to hit the fan and she’s going to throw a big, shiny weapon at us to take care of it’_.

Chris grimaced in turn. “That’s… something.” He had never liked Ada, so he didn’t apologize. A part of him was probably glad that this had happened.

Leon decided to overlook that and push on. “There has to be someone in Chris Redfield’s life?” Unless it was that kid who died during the ordeal with Simmons… Leon felt awkward as he waited for the answer. Awkward and slightly hopeful. Maybe Chris would throw a telling glance his way…

Even better, Chris made full eye contact. He held it for exactly four seconds and Leon knew because he counted.

Chris’s eyes finally skittered away. “I’ve considered a few options,” he answered ambiguously. He cleared his throat. “We should get together sometime. I’ve been watching _Wallace and Gromit_.”

“I have no idea what that is.”

“You’ll probably hate it, but I’m calling dibs on the movie selection right now.”

“Then I’m bringing over chocolate and salted caramel popcorn and your washboard abs are going to be gone by morning.”

Chris barked a laugh. “Sounds perfect.”

~::~

_Eight months later…_

When Leon was first told by the BSAA, he really thought that they were full of shit. He shrugged it off, scoffed, and said, “Wait 24 hours and then call me if he isn’t back by then.”

He should have taken them up on it that first time. They waited three days before calling him again, and only after losing one of their teams in an attempted extraction.

Chris Redfield had been infected. Limited intel suggested it had been an altered form of the t-Virus and that this variant was called the I-virus.

Leon, still disbelieving, had muttered, “Must be short for Idiot.”

The BSAA were understandably unamused with his antics by then. If they didn’t need him so much, Leon was convinced that their operatives would have formed a line and each paid to kick him between the legs.

Even as he flew to Poland, he was seriously doubting their intelligence. A part of him understood that this line of business meant that none of them would die of old age. Somehow, he had never applied that logic to the BSAA captain. Chris was edging toward 50 at this point and had been in the game for as long as there had _been_ a game. The idea of him becoming a BOW was – it was hard to wrap his mind around.

Everything in him was telling him that the BSAA was wrong. That, even if Chris _was_ infected, there was a poorly hidden cure somewhere in Poland with the man’s name practically written on it. That, on the off chance that Chris _was_ a BOW, Chris’s sheer stubbornness would outpower the mutation. They had all taken turns falling into the deep, dark abyss of depression and unhealthy coping mechanisms, but Chris was still the strongest man he knew. There was no possible way that Chris was a weapon for the enemy.

And yet, as the plane approached Poprad, a doubt surfaced.

What if they were right? What if Leon was going to walk out of this airport, drive to Zakopane 21 miles away, hike through Tatra National Park, creep into the recently uncovered research facility at the lake floor of Morskie Oko, and find Chris Redfield as the monster the BSAA had said he had become? What if Leon came this whole way, not to retrieve the man he had admired and respected for twenty years, but to put him down like a rabid dog?

 _‘Not likely’_ , he thought snidely. _The Princess Bride_ popped into his head, Vizzini screeching “ _Inconceivable!_ ”

Strapping himself in for descent, he recalled Inigo’s response: “ _You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means_.”

~::~

Zakopane at any point in the year was a vacation attraction as it contained the headquarters for Tatra National Park. Fortunately for Leon, it was July, meaning that he was avoiding the downpour of winter season tourism.

He checked into Hotel Willa Pod Skocznią, less than a mile away from Tatra Mountains. It was not the closest to the mountains, or the cheapest, or even the most expensive hotel. It was aesthetically pleasing and affordable, just like every other hotel and motel in Zakopane. Given the number of fine establishments near the mountains, the surprise he felt at finding a familiar face by the check-in desk was due to seeing her at this specific hotel more than finding her here at all.

Of course, she would be here.

“How are you holding up, Claire?” he asked softly, approaching the redhead.

She glanced at him over her shoulder before twisting around to smile painfully. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her hair flat and greasy in its ponytail.

Now Leon was definitely worried. If there was one person he would expect to never give up on Chris, it would be his little sister.

Maybe Leon should be giving the BSAA more credence…

“Hey, Leon,” she said in a soft voice. Without warning, she closed the distance separating them and curled him gently into her arms like _he_ was the one about to break. She tucked her chilly nose into the curve of his shoulder and neck.

He returned her embrace. With Sherry as more or less his adoptive daughter and Claire as his best friend, he had gotten good at giving hugs and accepting them. If anything, he hungered for these intimate, familial embraces that reminded him he wasn’t alone. That he was wanted as more than a weapon.

As he held her, he found that he had questions. The first one he asked was, “When did they tell you?”

Obviously, Claire would come for her brother. Yet, the timing of them showing up in Poland at the same time was uncanny, especially given that Chris had supposedly been infected more than four days ago. It had taken a full day for his team to return to headquarters without him, three days where they had sent a different team to find Chris, and then about seventeen hours between Leon agreeing to take the mission and actually arriving in the hotel.

Leon understood his own reasons – might someday soon hate himself for not taking this seriously sooner – but, looking at Claire, he could see that she had accepted the news readily.

“Yesterday,” she said into his shoulder. “They had Nadia call me… She gives her condolences.”

Fucking _yesterday_. Even if they were wrong, they should have told Chris’s little sister a hell of a lot sooner. At the least, they could have called her the same day they first called Leon.

“I am… so sorry.” That was a shitty thing to do.

“You’re not the one who should be sorry.”

Feeling suddenly guilty, he ducked his head. His chin rested on her thin shoulder. “Maybe I should be. They called me days ago to come here and take care of this. I… didn’t believe them. They sent another team in my place. None of them made it back.”

She was quiet for a moment. Claire squeezed him one last time before letting him go and stepping back. “I don’t blame you,” she decided. “I don’t want to believe it either.”

“It’s _Chris Redfield_!” he exploded. “Are we really expected to believe that the war on bioterrorism finally got the best of him?”

She studied him with solemn green eyes. “I always knew it would,” she admitted. “I guess I can believe this is happening because I have been expecting this call ever since he started the BSAA.”

He held her elbow in one hand, hesitant to break the connection. “Then why are you here?”

Her eyes wandered away from him, out of the picturesque windows that looked into a beautiful and cruel world. At last, she gave a bitter-sounding laugh. “I just realized that I’m hoping they’re wrong.” She shook her head ruefully, gaze dropping to her boots. “I didn’t even tell my work that I was leaving. I’m not sure that I’ve even been awake since getting the call. This feels like a nightmare, and I can wake up and he’ll be there… Nadia told me that you would be at this hotel and I went on autopilot.”

That explained a lot. The fact that Hunnigan told the BSAA exactly where the DSO was setting him up was strangely cooperative of her, though.

“A little hope wouldn’t be amiss right now,” he decided.

“It will hurt so much more when we’re wrong.”

“ _If_ we’re wrong. Who knows Chris better than we do?”

She gave him a knowing look, one he did not appreciate.

“Not a word.”

A hint of life sparkled in her eyes, lips curling up. It disappeared just as fast, tears welling. She swiped them away with her sleeve before they could fall, and yet her agony was palpable. Chris had not just been her big brother, he had _raised_ her. Claire was Leon’s best friend, but Chris was Claire’s. Their brother-sister bond was terrifyingly strong, even with their overly busy schedules.

“Want to get a room together?” he asked. He sensed that she did not want to be alone right now. He preferred rooming by himself – no one to judge how deep into the bottle he fell to fall asleep, no one to see him wake up shaking and sweating, no one to see his career had mangled his body after he stepped out of the shower – but Claire’s happiness would always be his top priority. She had accepted him at a time when even his own family was trying to make him repent. She accepted him now that he was an alcoholic that hadn’t spoken to his family since 2000.

Well, she didn’t _accept_ that so much as she refused to abandon him. She was so strong. Had to be a Redfield trait.

She smiled hesitantly. “Actually – that would be great. We can plan together.”

He was on an official mission to either retrieve or eliminate her big brother (the BSAA and DSO both had heavily hinted at elimination) and he should be telling her to go home. She had already said TerraSave didn’t know she was here, so she was acting as a civilian.

More than that, though, she was acting as a sister, and had the battle experience to be preferable as a partner over most everyone else in the DSO and BSAA combined.

“Sounds good,” he agreed. He was already planning on not sleeping.

“We’ll get one bed. I’m in a cuddling mood and I’m not giving you a choice,” Claire told him.

“Does consent mean nothing to you?”

She gave him her very sad eyes, made even sadder with actual grief, and he decided he wouldn’t even tease about it.

“I have nightmares,” he admitted.

“I know. So do I.”

~::~

The good news about the prior two missions was that they knew how to get into the research facility. With a facility under a lake, it wasn’t necessarily possible for the enemy to change where the entrances and exits were without drowning everyone inside.

Ania Kowalczyk had been a minor benefactor for Umbrella; not because she wanted to unleash the undead and BOWs on her own country, but because she wanted to eradicate the entirety of Russia. Her hatred of the country was well-documented in the news, though even those articles failed to mention that she was on a genocidal warpath. She funded the construction of an Umbrella research facility in Tatra National Park and then purchased it outright. She had brought in scientists she approved of and had purchased the early ε strain off the black market in 2000. What she had been doing with the ε strain – the same used in Umbrella’s Tyrant Project – was up for debate.

Ania was a successful businesswoman with an inheritance that had only grown with her investments, her last living family member being her mother. It had been a digital financial record recovered from an Umbrella branch raid months prior that had revealed her connection to the development of Bio Organic Weapons as well as the location of her research facility. Even though she had been working independently of Umbrella for some time, the documents revealed, Umbrella had kept its eye on her till the company’s dying breath. Between making the connection and infiltrating her facility, the most time had been spent on figuring out how one could get into an underwater facility in a national park without being discovered.

As far as Leon and Clare could surmise from the files spread out over the foot of the bed and the nearby sofa, Chris had successfully gotten his team to the bottom of the lake without being attacked. Once they were inside, however, the situation took a nasty turn. One of his underlings, an agent named Hank Gavin, had given his statement from a hospital bed, both his legs gone from the knees down.

He said that another agent had wanted to inspect a mural that was directly right of the vestibule they had come in through. The floodable airlock could only hold three people at a time and Chris had opted to make sure that his entire team got safely into the building, meaning that Gavin and two other agents were tasked with securing the vestibule and the foyer immediately after. The vestibule was lined with water suits and scuba gear, Gavin claimed. The foyer just beyond it was where the mural was. 

Gavin alleged that Chris and the other two members of their team had just safely left the airlock and were in the vestibule when the agent inspecting the mural touched the mural. Gavin recalled, with surprising memory, that the agent had been playfully fondling a perfectly painted breast of some half-beast woman in the mural, her face a visage of hideous glee and her legs those of a wolf. He remembered because the mural had been shocking in its contents, even for a genocidal, terroristic woman.

He remembered that the half-beast woman was “fuckin’ herself with a severed arm. Who the fuck even painted this shit?”

The agent had continued to be inappropriate to the mural, so far as to lay his hand over her visible vulva and say, “Don’t mind if I have a turn”. This was the moment when Chris and the other members finally entered the foyer. Gavin said he knew Chris was about to chew out the agent for “being such a sick fuck”, but something happened.

At this, Leon paused in his storytelling and told Claire humorlessly, “This is why you never touch the art.” She chuffed from her position at the head of the bed, still damp from the shower Leon had encouraged her to take. Leon continued reading the report aloud.

From where Gavin was standing only three feet away from the other agent, he heard a ‘click’ as the agent discovered that the painted woman’s vagina was a button and that, by pressing down on it, the agent unleashed a series of events that would put the entire team in a difficult position.

The heavy metal door to get out of the foyer had immediately locked and the airlock beyond the vestibule opened at both ends, flooding the vestibule with lake water. They effectively became trapped in the foyer, especially since their swimming gear was in the vestibule. A previously unnoticed door in the mural slid opened like an elevator door and at least a dozen zombies _ran_ at them. “Not walked, not stumbled,” Gavin said in his oral report which was typed up by a scribe. “They fuckin’ _ran_. And they dodged when we shot at them!”

It wasn’t anything Leon or Claire hadn’t seen before. It was the goal of many weapons dealers working with BOWs to increase the intelligence of their products and Leon was not going to be nervous unless Gavin said any of zombies knew how to operate a bazooka; he fucking hated the BOWs that knew how to use a bazooka. Fucking _Tyrants_ and _Plaga_. Chris would have been familiar with that sort of terror as well.

Chris had managed to rally his men to defeat the onslaught at the loss of one man – the agent who had been touching the mural and was too close to save. They had then infiltrated the facility through the door the zombies had entered from, given that there was no other way out of the foyer.

This pathway led into a containment unit that they managed to brainstorm their way out of by solving riddles. Gavin had found that “strange as hell”. Leon and Claire could only give each other tired, knowing looks.

“Puzzles,” they said together, disgusted.

After solving the riddles, they took a right and ended up on a walkway that went over a large chamber with water access. They overheard two scientists discussing an escaped experiment that had gotten into the lake and how they would not be able to retrieve it in time. Gavin did not know what they had to be in time for. The scientists did describe the monster as some sort of trout monstrosity.

Gavin admitted that he had laughed about that at the moment – “How do you make a fuckin’ trout scary?” – but had been laughing a lot less when, after a later incident caused the water level in the chamber to rise, the same trout-based BOW had taken both of his legs. Chris had saved his life and their medic had managed to stop him from bleeding out or dying of shock right then and there.

They had set the detonators and had wiped all present digital files. This was the best they could do as the agent who had perished at the entrance had been their tech geek; without their tech geek, they couldn’t check for backdoors into the servers or retrieve any information kept behind passwords more complex than ‘Password123’ – which, unfortunately, meant that they hadn’t been able to glean anything of importance from the computers. Paper documents had given the team a better understanding of some of the experiments being conducted in Poland without explaining what the end goal was. All the same, the mission was considered a success. So far, the trout monster seemed like their biggest problem beyond the running zombies and some four-foot-long crawfish.

They were just figuring out if they could use some of the emergency scuba gear in the water access chamber to get them all to the surface when a new BOW stormed in.

The written report claimed that Gavin had stopped talking at this point. Any further requests and then demands that he continue talking were met with, “Captain Redfield did what he had to do.”

Lisa Muncht, the medic, was less detailed in her report. However, she did say that the new BOW had been at least 8 feet tall, had been impervious to firepower and physical force, and had looked like a diseased shark had been attached to a giant.

Leon summed up the BOW as something Guillermo del Toro would want in one of his movies. There was a note in the corner: _Is this something Mr. Werewolf would draw?_

“Does this BOW sound like the sea creature from _Shape of Water_ to you?” Claire asked from where she was laying on the floor. “Just bigger and not as sexually appealing?”

“Is that the movie I was thinking of?” he wondered. “I thought something like that.”

Just in case it was important, he looked up Mr. Werewolf. It turned out that he was a Polish artist whose real name was Jakub Różalski and was known for fantasy art. He was in no way connected to this mission.

Nonetheless, for a moment, Leon let himself enjoy the disturbing number of paintings depicting Santa Claus about to get killed.

“How do they make these things?” Leon muttered to himself, referring to the BOWs as he made a spur-of-the-moment purchase of _Rudolph Uprising_ for Sherry. He paused at another painting, _Starza_ : A knight in ragged, dark clothing had his clawed hands raised as he faced off with three knights in white, dressed for the Crusades, and a giant behind them dressed the same except the symbol on his chest almost looked like the Umbrella symbol… High above the dark knight’s head swung a noosed body. Leon was about to scroll past it when he read the description:

_“When you try to act like a real knight but you are savage inside.”_

He purchased that one too and had them sent to his apartment address, given that he survived this mission.

“I have actually discussed BOWs with several geneticists and professors,” Claire told him. “They hate BOWs so much, it’s almost funny. They all say that Bio Organic Weapons are possible in theory, but this level of mutation in living organisms shouldn’t be possible. Every scientist I have talked to says that these creatures shouldn’t exist.”

“They really shouldn’t,” Leon agreed, although probably not for the reason a geneticist might say.

Claire understood him. “Yeah,” she echoed softly.

The BOW had chomped down Chris’s ribs after knocking the captain to the ground and had torn free a chunk of flesh.

Angela Jones, another member of their team, managed to obtain a harpoon gun hanging on a rack in the chamber and shoot the BOW in one eye, which turned out to be a good plan. The BOW’s eyes were not protected like the rest of its body and the harpoon went straight into its skull. The monster expired and fell on top of a heavily injured Chris.

Chris managed to get back up, secure Gavin in a wetsuit, and make sure they all had oxygen tanks, all before Muncth finally got to check the damage. That was when the shit really hit the fan.

Muncht managed to get Chris to stay still long enough for her to look at the wound, planning to cleanse and wrap with the very short window of time they had. Given how much the BOW had bitten off, she was uncertain if he would make it to the surface by his own strength. His team agreed that they could help him and Gavin to the surface as long as both were conscious and able to provide even minimal effort on their parts. Gavin was barely functioning after losing his legs but managed to make weak doggy-paddle motions with his hands to show that he would attempt to swim even in a state of shock.

Muncht found that Chris’s wound had stopped bleeding remarkably fast. The torn flesh was grey in color, veins swollen and turning dark blue under his skin. He was infected, and the infection was moving fast. Muncht noted that she had not seen these signs of infection in Gavin and hypothesized that the BOW that had attacked Gavin had not been infectious. That, or the rate of infection was slower in Gavin and no visible signs had appeared yet.

(A follow-up note at the bottom said that Gavin had been tested while hospitalized and was virus-free.)

The conclusion was the same: Chris demanded that they use their energy and resources to save themselves and Gavin. He gave them little choice in the matter. In the end, they conceded and left him behind.

The remaining team members returned to the Long Island BSAA base near UN Headquarters via the Francis S. Gabreski ANGG and gave a rundown of the situation. After a very short internal debate, the BSAA requested that the DSO loan out Leon Scott Kennedy to retrieve or destroy Chris Redfield. The DSO put the BSAA directly in contact with Leon, to which this specific note was left in the briefing:

_DSO special agent Leon S. Kennedy refused to partner with BSAA to retrieve and/or eliminate the remains of BSAA Founder and Captain Chris Redfield._

Leon felt accused of failure.

There were reports of the follow-up mission: Largely, of pulling together and then sending out a new 6-agent team, and then of receiving three transmissions from Poland. Most of the underwater facility had successfully been destroyed during the first mission. However, the facility had been set up so that it could essentially split into three separate buildings at any time given that a specific entrance in each section was sealed off beforehand. In the grand scheme of things, especially considering recent events, this design had saved an entire sector of the facility from being destroyed. BSAA agent Yemen, stationed as a scout, stated that no one was seen going in or out of the lake and it was assumed that it had been abandoned.

The retrieval team descended to the facility.

The first transmission was Gayle Finnigan reporting that they had successfully entered the sector that was still standing – it was the same sector Chris and his team had entered through, proven when Gayle described the disturbing mural in the foyer with the beast-woman and her severed arm-turned-sex toy. She carefully enunciated that _no one_ was to touch the mural _anywhere_ and her team managed to safely exit the foyer.

The second transmission came an hour later. Her team had discovered the containment unit the previous team had escaped after going down the mural corridor. To the right of the door was a solid wall, blocking off their progress toward the chamber with water access. As the other two sectors had been destroyed and the chamber had been in the second sector, the team was not surprised. Finnigan hypothesized that Captain Chris Redfield’s remains or whatever BOW had resulted from his mutation had either been destroyed in the explosion or was loose in the lake. She stated that her team would continue to check the rest of the remaining sector for any unusual activity.

It was one hour and thirty-two minutes later when the third transmission was sent. Her voice was filled with horror as she said, “He’s still here. They’re _experimenting_ on him. He’s in a capsule of Bio Organic fluid. There is a chart here… It says he has been infected with the I-virus!”

There were no images or videos available with the audio records.

This was the last that was heard of her team. It was in the morning that early hikers around the lake found the remains of six bodies scattered on the shore. From the time of that cleanup to Leon getting called back was less than 24 hours.

It was assumed that Chris, as a BOW, had destroyed the BSAA team.

Claire stared into space after the end of the recording. It was with a burst of energy that she smiled at Leon and said, with forced cheeriness, “They’re only assuming it was Chris. There is a chance that it wasn’t!”

“Exactly,” Leon agreed. It was finally hitting him that the possibility of Chris being a goner was higher than the possibility that he wasn’t. He wished he had some whiskey. “How do we get in? I feel like third time’s the charm for them and the mural entrance isn’t going to work for us.”

“I think that it will, actually,” Claire disagreed. “Six highly trained BSAA agents went through that way two days ago and none of them came out alive. The fact that the mural entrance wasn’t better guarded after the first infiltration that destroyed two-thirds of their base tells me that Ania wants us to go down there. Ania must know how important Chris is and is willing to keep using him as bait to take out as many agents as possible before the BSAA just stops sending people to retrieve him. It’s like a flytrap!”

“But we have to,” Leon followed along. “We know that they want to use Chris as a BOW. Even if the BSAA gives up on him as a person, they have to destroy him as a weapon.”

Pain flashed across Claire’s face before she calmed herself. “Then she’s going to keep leaving that mural entrance unguarded. It is the only way in without flooding the building now that the other two sectors are down. She’ll want us to get inside. Then we’re at the mercy of whatever killed the last team.”

It went unsaid that it might have been Chris, largely because neither of them were fully willing to believe that just yet. Leon was practical, was a strategist and a realist – but even he could not tell himself, _‘It’s definitely Chris’_ without his mind rebelling with _‘Fuck you, you don’t know Chris.’_

Leon remembered the BOWs he had fought in the past: The Lickers, the Tyrants, the _Las Plagas_ , the zombies, and so many others.

If Chris really was mutated now, what were their chances?

“You ready to play her game?” Leon asked.

Claire bared her teeth in a smile that was more vicious than she usually let herself be. The Redfields would always go out of their way to save each other.

“Sounds like fun.”

~::~

Stepping out of the shower that night, Leon studied himself in the mirror. Back in 1998, getting on the police force had been near impossible. More than once, he had thought his fellow cadets and instructors at the police academy wouldn’t let him survive long enough to get on the force.

He had made a valiant attempt at first to hide the truth, to go by his deadname and let his voice go high and light. He had stopped wrapping his chest even though it made him feel naked and had told himself to suck it up. He wouldn’t have to keep it up forever, he would tell himself, just long enough to get his life together. Once it was safe for him to, he’d come out and he’d tell the friends he had made by then, “Hey, my name’s actually Leon and I’m a guy.” And his friends would say, “No shit? Well, I support you,” and he’d reply, “Fuck yeah, that’s why I knew coming out to you would be okay.”

Except he got into the academy and they sniffed him out like bloodhounds. He was too stubborn to back down all the way, to cling to the lie, and he had ended up outing himself people who definitely did _not_ support him.

Applying for a job with every instructor at the Police Academy against him had been a special kind of Hell. When Raccoon City hired him, he knew they were either corrupt or using him as a publicity stunt. He’d gone with it anyway just to get away from home and start his own life the way he wanted it.

He had not expecting Umbrella. He had not expected the American Government to track him and Sherry down so quickly. Men like him weren’t even allowed to serve in the military until a few years ago, he hadn’t thought that the Division of Security Operations (DSO) would all but force him into their ranks after surviving that nightmare. Since then, his health insurance had paid for hormone therapy and top surgery.

Risking his life and sanity every other week to save the world had its benefits.

Early on, after Leon found Chris and reunited him with Claire, she had Leon hang out with them: Beach trips and barbeques, slumber parties and bar hopping… anything they could fit into their chaotic schedules.

There had been this incident where Leon and Chris had crashed at Claire’s apartment after a night of drinking. This was just a few weeks before his top surgery, and so he had unthinkingly taken off his binder to go to sleep. In his sloshed mind, he knew that Claire was safe and had forgotten that Chris existed.

In the morning, he had stumbled to the kitchen for coffee and had literally fallen on Chris when he tripped over the man’s poorly placed jeans. Chris apparently didn’t like wearing clothes when he was drunk and had only kept on his boxers; waking up in the morning with a hangover, he had decided he wasn’t ready to pick up his drunkenly-tossed aside clothing.

Leon fell onto that glorious, naked torso like a bad romcom, hands flying up and away so that he wouldn’t accidentally touch more than he already was. They were pressed chest-to-chest.

“Um,” Chris had said eloquently. “G’morning to you too?” Then there was a pause. Chris’s hazy eyes squinted down at him.

Chris was only 2 inches taller than him, and yet, in that moment, Leon felt horribly small.

“Don’t say anything,” fell out of his mind before the panic had even cleared away. “Don’t say a _fucking_ thing, Redfield, or else I will kick your _ass_. And Claire will _kill_ you.”

Chris had made a concerned noise in the back of his throat. “I don’t want that.” A hand landed carefully on Leon’s shoulder as Chris took a single step back to separate them. Chris’s eyes flickered curiously downward but did not linger. He smiled.

Chris was cute when he smiled. Especially back then when he’d been so much younger and less battered.

“You think you can stand on your own?” he’d asked.

Chris didn’t ask about Leon’s chest. He didn’t demean or degrade or make Leon feel bad. He said just that – _You think you can stand on your own?_ And he really was just talking about if Leon had recovered from tripping over his jeans, nothing more profound than that.

“Yeah,” Leon said, righting himself. “I’m good… Thank you.”

“No problem,” Chris said.

That was it.

For the longest time, Leon thought that, maybe, Chris had actually been too hungover to understand, that maybe he didn’t actually know.

There came a day when someone on the police force Leon had graduated with ended up in the BSAA. Leon only heard about it afterward, but the man said something about Leon – something very unflattering, apparently. Chris also heard about it and had made the guy’s life a living hell for the remaining days of his BSAA career, of which there were only three. After Chris took him on as a sparring partner, he decided that he and the BSAA were not a good fit and resigned.

Chris definitely knew and he had never treated Leon any differently.

Leon was so unaccustomed to human decency when it came to his transition that he’d practically started writing their initials in hearts like a teenager after that. Even when Chris was angry at him, even when Chris was yelling at him, even when Chris was _challenging_ him, Chris still treated him like Leon. He could be a dick, but he recognized Leon as his equal and that turned out to be Leon’s biggest kink.

He couldn’t help but be even a little bit in love with Chris.

 _Maybe_ more.

Leon looked over his body. There were days when he thought shit flowing in a sewer was better than him, but he knew he was attractive with clothes on. He knew he looked _good_ , that people wanted him. He was proud of his body and the work he put into it, but, fuck, the scars… The only good scars he had were under his pecs. He’d taken back a part of his body with that surgery and hadn’t had to wear a binder since.

There were burns on his back that would remain even after he died, though, skin glossy and white and numb to the touch. Yoga kept him flexible, at least. Slashes from knives and star-like blasts from bullets damaged his flesh, even bite marks. Thank God not every virus had been contagious through saliva. Several of the bite marks were as old as Raccoon City. Some were just the indents of teeth while one on his calf was gnarled and twisted. There were locales on his body where his bones had snapped and torn through his skin. There was metal holding him together in places.

Once the clothes came off, the battlefield that was his body was put on display. It was painful to see.

Chris would have scars just like these, he thought. He’d understand. He’d be able to look at Leon without horror or pity.

If Chris wanted him. After knowing the man for so long, Leon was certain that he didn’t – That he _hadn’t_.

“What are we going to find down there, Chris?” he muttered to his reflection.

His reflection only stared morosely back at him, familiar hazel eyes sad and hopeless.


	2. Infiltration and Extraction - Untouchable

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, the villain discusses her childhood as a sex slave. There are no explicit scenes, but she does describe it in some detail and aims to torture Leon and Claire - though not sexually. I know that there are survivors who grow up to be good people, the best people, the people who want to save the world and make sure that no one ever gets violated again. I was sexually abused as a child and I can assure you that I would rather commit murder than let someone put a wrong hand on a kid. 
> 
> I also know that some survivors learn to cope with their trauma in a very different, reverse way. Please proceed with caution if discussing childhood rape is upsetting to you.

Claire was right in that getting into the facility was as easy as it had been for the previous two teams. The water was freezing, but they managed with their insulating wetsuits.

They swung into the floodable airlock and waited for it to drain before walking into the vestibule. In the vestibule, they stripped off their swimming attire.

In the foyer, they got their first look at the infamous mural.

They studied it critically for a moment. Claire asked, “Do you think Ania commissioned this?”

“I can’t think of any artist with the balls to just walk into an underwater building run by terrorists and paint this without getting some form of consent first,” Leon reasoned.

There was the beast-woman with her severed arm, but the scenery around her was equally captivating in a horrific manner. From the looks of the tattered and burning flag in the distance, Ania truly wanted to destroy Russia in a traumatic and agonizing way. There were bodies and fire and snow, a sky dark and roiling with storm clouds. The beast-woman was reclining more toward the left-center part of the mural, a rotting polar bear at her feet.

“What did Russia do to her?” Claire asked.

“From what I understand, it’s not personal. Poland as a whole hates Russia.”

“Oh. Well, then.”

“It’s unsettling how much she’s taken it to heart,” he allowed. “She might hate Russia more than the average Polish citizen.”

“We can at least hope.” Her gaze fell down the woman’s vagina. “Which way do you want to go now?”

“What are the chances that there are more zombies behind that door?”

“I have no idea.”

“Let’s go through the foyer for now instead of going through the wall. We should try to retrace Gayle’s footsteps.”

Claire offered a sharp nod. “Got it.”

The first hour of searching was uneventful. Nothing tried to kill and/or eat them. They found that the design flaw in having exactly one corridor that connected three different sectors was that there were numerous maze-like impasses created in the process. Every time they maintained an Eastern direction, they inevitably hit a corridor that ended suddenly and had to backtrack as a result. Overall, their journey took them down deeper into the lake.

After a long period of silence, Leon said, “For a flytrap, this is going pretty smoothly.”

“Maybe it’s more like a beartrap.” Claire caught his eye.

“Walk into a big forest and everything’s fine until you take one wrong step?” he surmised.

“Yeah. Gayle’s team did not have report any hostile activity. Yet none of them made it back to the surface alive. Something happened between their last transmission and their bodies being found.”

“The beartrap. Your brother.”

“There might be a BOW here to guard him. Anything that tries to take him gets killed.”

This was a much better hypothesis than that Chris was the BOW killing people. Leon held his tongue despite a logical voice in his head getting steadily louder in telling him to leave Fantasyland behind and face reality.

The most exciting thing that happened between them entering the facility and reaching what appeared to be a large laboratory on the level closest to the lakebed was finding a single mutant crawfish corpse in one of the dead-end corridors. Its carapace had been bashed in as if struck by superhuman fists.

At this point, Leon almost _wanted_ trouble. The silence was too eerie. He had too much time to think about what they might find. Hell, he would be happy with one of those out-of-place puzzles he had dealt with on other missions. He remembered Rebecca telling him about how she had once had to “balance good and evil” to open a secret entrance door. He had had to do something similar in Raccoon City.

Within the laboratory was a smaller room, set in the center like a cube within a cube. Walking around the border of the room found that some sort of evacuation had to have taken place; although there were stations where computers had clearly been set up, extension cords and desks still set up, most if not all of the laboratory equipment and consoles had been removed. If not for the plaque above both entrance that said “LAB C”, it could have been anyone’s guess what the room was.

Could this have been done before Chris’s team had arrived? The report had said no one had been seen entering or leaving the facility since Chris’s team was extracted.

Leon posed this as a question to Claire. She frowned thoughtfully. “The BSAA only mentioned stationing one agent,” she pointed out. “I don’t think it’s impossible to miss someone gutting a lab if he has an entire lake to watch.”

Leon considered this. “He was told the exact location of this facility, though, wasn’t he? He should have kept his eyes on this building, regardless of where these people were getting in and out of the lake.”

“He was a scout,” Claire said. “Watching the facility would mean having to stay underwater or directly above the building in a boat – either of which would have put his life in immediate danger and he wouldn’t have been able to do his job.”

Leon was of the opinion that the agent _clearly_ had not done his job, and yet held his ire to himself. Whether or not the guy had an entire lake to watch, it seemed shoddy that he missed so much activity.

Leon recalled that Gavin had mentioned scientists discussing getting things done “before it was too late”. It was possible that the facility had already been in the process of moving to a new location and that the lab had been gutted before Chris’s team had even gotten here.

That raised a new question, though: Why would they be in the process of moving?

Leon’s first thought was that they knew the BSAA was investigating them. How would Ania have figured that out, though?

They circled back to the door that led into the smaller room within the lab.

“It’s locked,” Claire said, tugging at the handle. “There doesn’t seem to be a keyhole…” She looked around the doorframe and then at the engraving just above it. “There’s a carving that looks like the outline of a trout. Do you think that means anything?”

Leon’s will to live left him in one long, exhausted sigh. Another fucking puzzle. “Probably that we need to find something that looks like a trout or fits in the engraving.”

“Why did I even ask?” Claire whined.

They had to go through the _entire facility_ all the way back to the foyer and they still had not found anything to open the door. They sat on one of the benches in the foyer and each had a protein bar.

“It could be a clock with a trout… something on it,” Claire guessed.

“You think we’ll have to repair a clock to get in that room?” It would not be the first time that a clock was the answer.

“That would be really inconvenient if you were someone who had to regularly go in there, wouldn’t it?”

“This lab was constructed by Umbrella. I think we all know by now that inconveniencing people in small and big ways is what gets them off,” Leon pointed out.

“That’s true.”

Leon considered his food wrapper. Ingredients contained fructose corn syrup and artificial flavors. “What if it’s lost in the lake?”

Claire groaned despairingly. “Maybe we should just try to break the door down…”

“That was a steel door set in a steel doorframe. Unless you have a plan to knock down the wall around the door, I don’t think anything is going to get broken except for us.”

“What if it was that easy, though? What if the door is really expensive and then the wall is just drywall?”

“Since when has anything been that easy?”

Claire considered the beast-woman. “We haven’t checked in there.”

“Once we go through there, the airlock and vestibule will flood… I don’t know how long it takes them to drain and that’s our only way out.”

“We’ll bring our wet gear in here.”

“… Shit, fine. I don’t think we have much of a choice.”

He wondered if Gayle’s team had had to do this. If they’d gotten all the way down to the laboratory and then had to backtrack to get the trout key for that one mystery room.

He dropped his gear inside the foyer and considered the possibilities.

There was a chance that the key had been lost with Gayle and her team, that they’d taken it with them out into the lake.

“This facility is really clean,” Leon said.

Claire frowned at him. “Okay? And?”

“Chris’s team fought zombies in this room, but there isn’t a drop of blood anywhere. Something killed Gayle’s team in this building, but I haven’t seen any signs of a struggle. Realistically speaking, if Chris is in that locked room, then the key would still be around the door because Gayle would have needed it to get in. The alternative is that Gale’s team went through the trouble of taking the key out of the carving and then putting it back where they found it.”

“Which they wouldn’t do.”

“Something killed them and put the key back so that we would have to go looking for it again.”

“So, the scavenger hunt is on purpose? What would be the point?”

He considered the question. “It might be connected to their deaths. We were just in the lab. Unless whatever is guarding Chris is in that room with him, then there has to be some other way of tipping it off that we’re trying to get in there.”

“You think finding the trout summons it?”

It was better than the alternative, which was that Chris was the killer.

“I’m just throwing out some ideas for now,” he told Claire. “It’s so quiet here… Thinking’s about the only thing I have to do.”

“Does it bother you too? I’m kind of hoping that there are zombies behind the mural. The more I realize how empty it is, the more I think that… Chris isn’t even here.”

“I hadn’t even considered that.” He should have. It made some sense that Ania would use Chris as bait to kill more agents, and yet it was even more logical that she would remove Chris altogether for being too valuable to her. Keeping him here as bait implied that she saw more value in dead BSAA agents than in Chris’s mutations.

“If he’s not here, I don’t know where to start looking.”

“We’d start with Ania first and then branch out from there.” He squeezed Claire’s shoulder. “I’m with you until we find him and beyond if you need me.”

She smiled at him. “I feel like we’ve switched personalities. You’re actually being optimistic.”

“Optimistic? What’s that? Sounds like disease.”

She chuckled. “Not going to lie, I want to be the one to touch the mural.”

“That’s great, because I really didn’t,” Leon admitted. He took a stance away from the mural, pistol at the ready, and waited.

Claire pressed down on the beast-woman’s vagina and then flung herself away from the wall, bringing her gun up expertly.

The airlock and vestibule almost immediately flooded and there was a cranking noise as the foyer door was swung shut and locked. The mural door swished open.

There was… darkness. Not a single sound, but also not a single light beyond the mural. Leon retrieved his flashlight and held it in one hand with the pistol aimed under it, then nodded at Claire to let her know he was ready as she did the same. They carefully edged into the hidden corridor.

It was wide enough for them to walk side by side, but Leon chose to walk slightly behind her and back-to-back in case anything came into the mural behind them. It was a straight path into a wide, circular dome which had to be where the zombies were once contained. It smelled awful and the walls and floors were smudged with human viscera, likely the work of the zombies trying to get out.

By the only door to get in or out was a screen inlaid into the cement frame of the glass dome they were trapped in. Turning the screen on revealed a riddle:

**I am not alive, but I grow.**

**I don’t have lungs, but I need air.**

**I don’t have a mouth, but water kills me.**

**What am I?**

“Fire!” Claire yelled. She cleared her throat when Leon just stared at her. “I like riddles, okay?”

“We all have our kinks, I won’t judge you.”

“It’s not a _kink_ , Leon!”

“I’m not kink-shaming you, it’s fine.”

“Oh, God.”

She typed **f-i-r-e** into the digital keypad. A thumb’s-up appeared and then a second riddle.

**You buy me taken apart,**

**To redo what has been undone.**

**Four of my pieces have one sharp corner,**

**The rest of them have none.**

**What am I?**

“That’s a puzzle,” Leon said.

“I have to admit, I’m having trouble with this one too.”

“No, I mean, the answer is a puzzle.”

Claire stared at it for a moment. “Oh! You’re right. Four sharp corners are the four corners of the puzzle… It’s made as one piece and cut up, then you buy it and have to put it together again… How did you figure that out so fast?”

Leon admitted softly, “Jigsaw puzzles are the only puzzles I like.” With the puzzles like this bullshit terrorists kept pulling on him, he tended to avoid big brain teasers that made him feel like his life depended on figuring them out.

“I’m judging you.”

“I didn’t judge you.”

“I have higher standards.”

“Ouch.”

She typed in the answer and another thumb’s-up appeared. A third riddle appeared. “Do you think… they put this here to see if any of the zombies would be smart enough to solve them?”

That was a great question. “Do _you_ think they were trying to make zombies smart enough to solve riddles?”

“It wouldn’t be about _making_ them smart enough to do it. These aren’t Einstein-level tests, most people would be able to figure them out given enough time.”

“You’re wondering if these people were testing to see if the zombies retained enough of their human intelligence to solve riddles.”

She gestured through the glass wall on the other side of the cement support beam of the dome. “There’s one other door after this one with another screen and there is nothing else in this room. I bet scientists never came in here unless they were picking out a test subject.” She looked up and so did Leon. There were enough surveillance cameras in these two rooms that Leon could tell no scientist ever got near the containment unit voluntarily. All observations had to have been made remotely.

“The room outside of this one is their failsafe,” he surmised, following her train of thought. “If any of their victims managed to solve these riddles and let out all of the zombies, the zombies still wouldn’t be able to escape into the facility.”

The third riddle said:

**The more of me there is,**

**the less you see.**

**What am I?**

“Oh, I’ve done this one before,” Claire said. She typed in **d-a-r-k-n-e-s-s**.

There was a sound like metal getting punched and then the light above the door turned green.

They quickly exited the room and continued to the next door.

Laying on the ground in front of it was a wooden figure shaped like a trout.

“Found it!” Claire cheered. Leon felt dread in his limbs as she picked it up and tucked it inside her vest.

“Something tells me we’re going to get found next,” he said.

“There’s that pessimism I was almost starting to miss. How good are you at chess?”

“I’ve beaten everyone I’ve played against.”

“Uh huh, and have any of those people not been Sherry or Jake?”

“Yes and fuck you. I’ve played against Rebecca.” Rebecca Chambers was actually a very intense competitor when it came to most games and Chess had been no exception. That had been a hard-earned victory that he had lorded over her head for two weeks.

“Then you try this first. I was never good at it.” She stepped back from the screen that showed a chess board. He was white and his computer opponent was moderately easy. It took him four minutes to get to checkmate.

The light above the door turned red. There was a sudden, ear-blasting screech that sent Claire and Leon scrambling, hands over ears. As quickly as it started, it ended, and the light above the door turned green. There was a ‘snk’ sound as it unlocked, but there were three separate dials on the door they had to align before it would actually open. The number ‘19’ was flashing at them from the screen now that the chess game was done. It took two tries for them to realize that they had to make the three dials equal 19 before they could unlock it and leave.

“Whatever killed the last team is coming for us now,” Claire said, tired. “We have to hurry.”

“Already doing that, thanks for reminding me anyway,” he called, jogging. She quickly caught up. From the containment unit they had just escaped, it was actually quicker to get to the lakebed-level laboratory. There were arrows with labels at every corridor bend to lead them.

Behind them, distantly, was the sound of heavy footsteps in slow pursuit. They kept at a jog to maintain their distance from whatever was following.

 _‘I will be pissed if that’s Chris,’_ Leon thought. _‘Came all the way here to find him just to turn around and run from him,’_

At last, they were back at the locked room. Leon let Claire on his back so that she could reach up and slot the trout figure into the carving. It settled in with a ‘click’ that was echoed by the door unlocking.

Leon didn’t even wait for Claire to jump down before he barreled through the door and slammed it shut behind them. Claire curled her arms around his shoulders and they both stared at the steel that suddenly seemed too flimsy to hold out whatever was coming for them. The wall around the door was definitely questionable; it was too thick to hear if the thing was still approaching, but there was a silent concession to not check just yet.

“I wish there was a way to lock the door from this side,” Leon muttered.

“I was just thinking that. It swings inward, so we could try to block it?”

They looked around for something to do that with.

What they saw when they turned around pushed that thought from their minds.

It was a large capsule, just like Gayle had said. In it was a yellowish liquid that Chris Redfield, or what had once been Chris Redfield, was suspended in.

If someone were to press a gun to Leon’s head and demand to know how he could tell that that was Chris, he’d probably get killed. There was a chart hanging from a hook toward the foot of the capsule and it had Chris’s name, time of capture, what he had been infected by, and what strain of virus that infection was. There was nothing from stopping a terrorist group from lying about a name, though.

What floated in that capsule looked like someone had tried to turn a T-103 series Tyrant into a mermaid and had gotten stuck a quarter of the way through. Leon could see something of Chris in the turn of his square jaw, in the shape of his forehead and nose; but his mouth was now a slit across his face and his slack jaw revealed triangular dagger teeth between thin, dark lips. His hair was gone and his body covered in dark gray scales. Wicked claws tipped his fingers and toes and there was a mysterious mass on his back that Leon could not identify, but that moved rhythmically even though the fluid was still.

Most impressive of all was the sheer _size_ of the creature. The chart said that the creature was exactly 249.936 cm, or 8 feet and 2 inches. Muscles bulged like they were sculpted from marble and one hand looked capable of squeezing Leon’s head like a clementine.

With a series of beeps, the fluid started to drain out of the capsule. Leon’s head swung toward Claire, who was watching the creature with determination.

“What are you doing?” he hissed.

She looked at him sadly but with no doubt. “I can’t leave him here, Leon. He’s my big brother. I’m sorry… I’m sorry that you’re stuck here with me. I need to know if there’s anything left of Chris in there.”

“The puzzles – you think if they were planned for the zombies that, maybe, whatever they were playing with here let Chris stay in control of himself?”

“I hope so,” she said.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay. I’m with you. Chris was… is important to me too. And I’ve seen enough shitty situations turn around at the last second to make even me a believer in miracles.” As much as he knew that he should blow the entire base up with Chris inside now that he had seen what the man had become, he couldn’t help but ask himself, _what if_?

Of course, a very large part of himself growled, _‘So this is how I die… like a lovesick idiot in an underwater facility by the claws of none other than Chris fucking Redfield. I should have seen this coming as soon as China.’_

They watched the fluid completely empty out. The creature was limp on the floor of the capsule, either unconscious or dead.

Leon wasn’t totally sure which he would prefer it to be.

Behind them, the door opened.

“Time’s up,” a gravelly voice hissed.

They spun on their heels simultaneously, guns coming up.

“Ania? Ania Kowalczyk?” Claire called in surprise, faltering.

“Hello, pets,” Ania greeted amicably. “Have you seen what you came to see?” She smiled and it was horrific. She had the same body shape of Chris, somewhere between the asset in _Shape of Water_ and a Tyrant. Her face was more human, however, unmistakably human on a body that no longer was. Her words were hissed between her dagger-like teeth. Her brown curls fell around her hulking, scaled shoulders. “I will have to escort you out now.”

“Very hospitable,” Leon muttered.

“What have you done to yourself?” Claire asked, taken aback.

“I have made myself _stronger_ ,” she growled. She took a heavy step forward, like she was made of stone instead of flesh. “I am _untouchable_. I have Redfield to thank for that.” She looked past them coolly at the slumped-over creature. “Our test subject before him was imperfect. It was little more than an animal, though at least smarter than the zombies.”

Leon thought, _‘Here we go, the bad guy’s going to tell us why they did this and what their plans are. What an honor, this has never happened before except for every fucking time I have done this before.’_

He shared an equally unimpressed look with Claire.

“Aren’t you going to ask why I have done this?” Ania asked. “You will live longer.”

“Sure,” Leon reluctantly agreed. “What’s your origin story, Ania? Why do you hate Russia so much?”

She frowned severely at them. “Are you mocking me?”

Claire elbowed him in the ribs. “No, no, we really want to know.” Her voice barely shook even though they were addressing the woman who had ultimately caused her brother’s dehumanization. Leon was proud of her. “You’re a smart, successful businesswoman. Why risk throwing away everything you have worked for to destroy Russia?”

“It is the mural, is it not?” she asked.

“Your hatred of Russia is well-documented,” Leon pointed out. “The mural really drives the point home, though.”

For someone with such a dangerous mouth, Ania somehow managed to smile prettily, and was all the more terrifying for it. “I became a successful businesswoman just _so_ I could destroy Russia. When I was a child, my parents got divorced. Mother would still let me visit my father on the weekends, however, because I loved him so much… He did not love me as much as I thought he did. He fell on hard times and used me to settle his debt. I was sold to a Russian named Maksim Antonov…” Her eyes glazed over as she remembered the past. “I was just a little girl…”

“Ania,” Claire tried to reason, “I can’t imagine what that must have been like, and I won’t tell you how you should feel.”

“This seems a bit excessive,” Leon added. Then, because he thought that being a child sex slave was a good reason to grow up angry and wish destruction on the people who had hurt Ania, “You pulled yourself out of an impossible situation and made something of yourself. With the resources at your disposal, you could get rid of the man who hurt you without unleashing BOWs all over a country.”

“Unleash BOWs all over Russia?” She looked delighted at the idea. “No, I plan on bombing all of the major cities. Normal bombs, meant to kill them and keep them dead, you see. An undead Russian is still an unforgivable Russian.”

“Because of one man?” Claire asked. “Because of one monstrous man?”

“You should be holding your father accountable,” Leon added. “You wouldn’t happen to have any plans for Poland, would you?”

“My father _was_ Russian,” she said. “Why do you think I was sold to a Russian?”

“Okay, that makes two Russians,” Leon muttered under his breath.

“Leon, _shut up_.”

“Maksim liked to host parties,” Ania reminisced with a childish, broken tone. “Grand, beautiful parties… And he would bring us out, his little girls, and his guests would treat us like party favors. And then, after the parties, he would starve us, because his guests liked to feed us sweets to make us nice, and he did not want us to get fat.”

Leon was seeing a horrific, unforgivable picture of rape and child abuse. Unable to imagine Ania as a child, he saw Sherry in her place and his stomach sank to his knees.

“I did escape him,” Ania continued. “A boy my age snuck me out in a food cart and took me home to my family. My mother did everything she could to make my life a fairy tale, full of the wonders and riches I had been denied with Maksim… And yet, I was always afraid. I had spent so long unable to control what was done to my body that I sought different ways to make me as untouchable as possible. I gained weight, I refused to bathe, I drank and I smoked, and yet nothing I did made me feel safe. Finally, I saw the monsters Umbrella had made.” She lifted her hands to the ceiling and made a slow turn, as if showing off a pretty dress. “Who would _dare_ touch me now? Only the BSAA! That is why they must go, and then I will be… _Untouchable_.”

 _‘No one remembers TerraSave,’_ Leon thought, glancing at Claire who was a TerraSave operative.

“I respect her choices,” Leon admitted to Claire. What lengths would he go to if it meant making sure no one could ever hurt him again? Ania was right in that alcohol did not inspire feelings of safety.

“Look at Chris and say that to me again.”

On reflex, Leon did.

Chris looked back at him, hazy eyes dark and familiar. He had gotten as far as lifting his head but had yet to figure out his limbs. Leon nudged Claire until she glanced over.

“Chris!”

“He stays,” Ania told them.

“You don’t need him,” Leon pointed out. “You got what you wanted from him, and the BSAA isn’t going to keep sending agents down here for you to slaughter.” There was a very good chance that they _would_ do exactly that, or just eventually decide to nuke the lake if they could get Poland to agree to it. “He’s of no value to you anymore.”

“I do need him. I want to make more little girls perfect like me.”

Claire stared at her in horror.

“After the childhood you had, you would rape someone else and subject them to your pain?” Leon demanded to know.

Ania snarled at him, furious. “No! Never! I need his blood, not his sperm. With every generation of the virus, the ε strain we built it on top of mutates and the I-virus is weakened. I need him alive so that I have a constant source of his specific strain of the I-virus. With him, I can save girls who are going through what I have been through. I can make them invincible!” She looked at her claws. “I can make them _untouchable_.” She was fixated with that word, attached to it in a way someone else would be a family heirloom: _Untouchable_ – the state of being she had been trying to ascend to since escaping her nightmarish childhood. She curled her claws toward her palms and, with chin dipped toward her clavicle, looked at them. “I do _not_ need you two. I find it very therapeutic when I talk about my past with others and yet I have always found it necessary to kill my confidants afterward. What I have gone through, no one can know.”

“I hope you haven’t had many confidants,” Leon said.

“There was a lovely group of listeners that came in the other day… You two will be leaving the same way.”

“I’m not leaving without my brother!”

Ania considered Claire, her pistol, and then Leon and his. “Would you say that I have to go over your dead bodies? Because that is what I am going to do.” With a hissing screech, she barreled toward them.

Leon and Claire began shooting at her, keeping up a constant barrage of bullets as they split up and moved to opposite sides of the room. She had already made it clear that she wasn’t going to hurt Chris, so the other man was not yet a concern – not unless he got out of his capsule and decided to help Ania instead of them.

Ania was not fast, but her legs were long, and she casually ate up more distance in each step than they did by running. Her skin was nigh impenetrable, and they were quickly running out of bullets trying to take her down.

“Aim for the eyes!” Leon yelled.

“Right!”

Ania heard and covered her face with a wide palm, taking thundering footsteps toward Claire. Claire made a run for the door, Leon gearing to do the same. Outside of the room, they might be able to find something more effective in taking Ania down, or at least in creating more space to fight.

Ania did not apparently like this and showcased a new ability they were not expecting: She curved her back up like a cat and the bundle on her back that looked strikingly like the one on Chris burst into motion.

She had motherfucking tentacles.

Leon was not far enough away to avoid her reach. She snagged Leon around the waist mid-run and slammed him against the ground repeatedly until the world swam in his vision.

“Leon!” Claire aimed for the head and tried to get in the eye shot while Ania was distracted, but Ania lashed out with her another tentacle and caught Claire across the abdomen. The redhead was thrown back with a cry of pain.

“Claire!” Leon wobbled his head in his direction. As far as he could tell, her organs were staying in her body. The damage for now was, hopefully, not critical.

Ania had the ability to tear them limb from limb and had done so before to others. She was playing with them.

“Why won’t you just finish us off?” Leon had to ask. “What is this cat-and-mouse bullshit?”

The monster smiled with all teeth. “Do you know how long I would get played with by Maksim and his friends? Sometimes, I would do anything I could to make them happy so that they would leave me alone.” She pressed a claw to his thigh and slowly started to dig it into his flesh. “I want you to beg just like that. I want you to beg for me to finish. I want you to say or do anything I want so that I will finally kill you and leave you alone.”

Her claw was digging through muscle. He couldn’t stop the shrill scream that left him, twisting his waist to try and get away. She was unperturbed as she slowly dug down to the bone. Ania pulled her claw out before forcing it back into the same hole, watching his face avidly. When she didn’t get the reaction she wanted, she pulled her claw out and shoved it in rougher, forcing a yell of agony and surprise from him.

“Ania!” Claire staggered to her feet. “Don’t do this. What you went through was horrible, something no one should have to go through. That doesn’t give you the right to hurt others like this. You can be better than the people who hurt you!”

The monster over him gazed upon Claire with almost childlike confusion.

“But I do not want to be the better person,” she said. “I want to be the monster they have nightmares about, no longer the other way around.” Now she forced her claw through his torso, scratching his ribs, and he yelled in hot anguish, body spasming.

There was a ‘click’ as Claire tried to fire again, but she had no more bullets. She threw herself at Ania instead, landing on the monster’s back over the tentacles and wrapping her arms around a scale-clad neck in a stranglehold.

Ania _laughed_ at her. “What are you doing, pet? Are you giving me a hug?” She casually wrapped a tentacle around Claire’s throat and waist and then threw her across the room. Claire hit the capsule hard enough to shatter the viewing glass and landed on top of the infected Chris.

With the distraction, Leon managed to free his pistol from Ania’s tight embrace and was going to fire a bullet straight into Ania’s laughing mouth – 

She swiped at his arm, snapping his ulna. The bullet lodged in the ceiling and Leon roared in fresh anguish as his gun flew from his useless hand. The shiny, broken end of a bone had torn through his skin, leaving him nauseated.

It would have been very helpful of Ania if she had left a rifle or a grenade launcher nearby. Why couldn’t all bioterrorists be so generous? He used to be so confused by the facilities and villages that would have heavy artillery lying around. Where was a rocket launcher when he needed it now?

He couldn’t stop the yell as she tickled his clavicle. She began to push down and he gritted his teeth as he felt the bone about to give, breathing hard through his nose –

Something roared and it wasn’t him, and it wasn’t Ania.

A dark mass rammed into the monster that was torturing him, muscles bulging and teeth bared, and then an infected Chris was bodily lifting Ania off of him and slamming her into a wall.

Leon rolled away from the immediate vicinity of their fight, unable to hold back a whimper as he jarred his broken arm and bone-deep puncture wounds. He felt his clavicle creak dangerously when he was on his left shoulder and almost give on the third rotation away from the BOWs. He lifted his head and found Claire laid out carefully by the capsule, a lab coat folded under her head like a pillow.

“Fine,” Leon griped, “Make sure she’s comfortable before you stop me from getting tortured. Like your priorities, Chris.” Even as he said it and sounded sarcastic, he found that he was relieved Chris had taken such care with his little sister.

It showed that the BSAA captain was still in there.

Behind him were the meaty, clanging sounds of punches and kicks, of teeth ripping into scales and flesh, but he couldn’t look. He fumbled to his knees and crawled to Claire’s side, reaching out to check for a pulse with a hand that would not stop trembling. He had to support all his weight on his left leg and abdomen, his right leg twitching from the puncture wound and his left arm useless.

There was a pulse. Even as he checked, she began to stir, eyes fluttering open. There was a small glass shard stuck in her cheek that Leon did not dare try to take out with his unsteady hand.

“You’re alive,” Leon told her, like she might not know. “You’re alive, and Chris is fighting Ania.”

That got her attention. “What?” She sat up – too fast. Swaying, she fell back down, then sat up slower. Leon looked over his shoulder to see what she was seeing, collapsing sideways so he was sitting on his buttocks and thigh.

There were more chunks missing out of Chris than Ania, which was definitely concerning. However, there _were_ chunks missing out of Ania, meaning that she was not totally impervious. Judging from her enraged screams and snarls, she did not like finding out that there was a man strong enough to still hurt her. Leon pitied her. She was a victim and she had never healed from her trauma.

He remembered the hunger in her eyes as she had dug her claws into his body and found the energy to think _‘We need to get the hell out.’_

Leon deadpanned, “We’ve got to go,” at the same time Claire yelled, “We have to help him!” There was a moment of making eye contact, of a mental battle of wills.

Leon gave in first. “Damn it, okay, how? Do you see a motorcycle anywhere? Bullets? A rocket launcher?” He was really holding out for that rocket launcher. “A splint?” His pain tolerance was legendary, honed by years of getting smashed into concrete structures by BOWs with ridiculous amounts of strength, and yet his open fracture was turning his vision grey around the edges. A split would have served him well.

Chris was getting a royal smackdown, weak from days in the capsule while Ania had been awake and active. Chris still fought like he couldn’t afford to lose. Leon hoped that was because he recognized his sister would die if he lost more than an animal instinct to survive.

“We can’t hurt her.”

“Yeah, but she can hurt us.”

“We need to distract her. If we can distract her, Chris can take her down.”

 _‘How do you suppose we do that?’_ He thought. As he opened his mouth, though, he already knew the answer. “I’m not going to like this,” he muttered.

“I don’t even have a plan yet,” Claire argued.

“I do.”

The agony of his open fracture was burning bright and pounding against his temples. His hand was alternating between shaking and being completely numb while shots of hot pain from his arm made him want to throw up.

Ania wanted to hurt them.

He dug his fingers into the open wound and did not even have to exaggerate his scream of pain as his ulna shifted, muscles burning in unforgettable pain.

Leon’s eyes rolled in their sockets, so close to passing out that he whimpered. When he managed to refocus on his surroundings, he saw that Ania had Chris pinned to the ground, tentacles and arms limiting his ability to fight her, and her entire attention was on _Leon_. 

The hunger in her eyes had been learned from the tormentors of her childhood. She was now bigger and stronger than him and he was giving her exactly what she wanted to please her: His pain. His tears. His powerlessness and inability to hurt her.

Leon let himself cry, as humiliating as it made him feel, and she licked her dagger teeth. Her grip loosened – just a slight bit – on Chris, and just for a moment, as if she was about to leave him and continue where she had left off with Leon.

It was a moment long enough for Chris to pull an arm free and curl his claws into Ania’s throat, pulling her trachea out of her body in a blink-and-you-miss-it motion. Ania went limp, mouth gaping like a fish. Chris held her body up by her decimated neck and hissed in her face, dagger teeth bared.

“No! Don’t,” he growled in a rough, unaccustomed voice, “you _dare_ hurt them.” His arms and tentacles worked together to throw her to the side. Almost like an afterthought, he straddled her body and pressed his hand over her face before applying the full mass of his body on her skull. It flattened under his strength.

“You did it,” Claire said numbly. “God, Leon, that looks awful.”

“Does it?” Leon quipped. “Feels great, can’t imagine why you think it would look bad.”

Claire was quiet for a moment. “Do you think we could have saved her? She was a victim…”

“She’d have to want to be saved. In the end, she chose this path for herself. There are a lot of survivors out there that don’t aspire to blow up an entire nation and torture strangers until they beg to die.”

“You’re right. I know that. I do… She just wanted to feel safe.”

Leon gestured to his arm. “And this. She wanted to do this.”

Heavy footfalls approached them. Chris as he now was kneeled next to them. In his alien face were familiar, concerned brown eyes. He opened his mouth a few times, tongue moving and teeth clacking, before he managed more words. “Are you both… okay?”

Leon looked pointedly down at himself and then at the blood trickling from Claire’s hairline and the glass shards that were sticking out of her skin. “Yeah, I think we’ll be fine,” he guessed.

Chris did his approximation of a frown and went to touch Leon’s upper arm, considerate enough to not touch the wound itself, and then stopped.

He stared at the back of his own hand. It was almost as wide as a shovel with fingers ending in talons. He turned it over and looked at his palm. As if summoned, a tentacle slithered across his fingers and rested there.

“I have… to die.”

“ _No_ ,” Claire snarled. “No, you don’t! Don’t you see? You look a little different, but you’re still you!” She painstakingly got to her knees and shuffled over to her brother, pulling him down into a tight hug. Even before Chris himself reacted, his tentacles tentatively returned the embrace. It was as if whatever brain function controlled them knew that Claire was only ever to be held with the utmost love. “We can work with this,” Claire was muttering into Chris’s chest. “We can make this work.”

“Leon… tell her this… won’t work.”

Leon stared at the tentacle that was curled gently around his uninjured arm, just casually holding him. “Claire, I don’t know if the BSAA will let him live. If they do, they’ll use him as a lab rat.”

“We’ll call Rebecca first!”

Rebecca was small and kind, but possibly terrifying enough to make the BSAA see things her way. She would be able to gather all the data the BSAA wanted, run experiments as humanely as possible, and likely feed Chris animal crackers between tests in that considerate way of hers. It wasn’t… a great solution. It was a solution, though, and better than having Chris disappear into a lab somewhere all in the name of making the world a better place in almost the same way Umbrella would say that they were making the world a better place.

“I don’t know if we can call Rebecca down here… And I don’t think I can make it to the surface by myself right now.” If they weren’t at the bottom of the lake, he might be able to float up.

“It won’t work,” Chris told them gently. “Leave me.”

“I will _not_ – ” Claire snarled.

Leon decided to try for some more emotional manipulation. He wasn’t a champ at it but fighting with Chris was only taking energy he didn’t have.

He let himself fall against Chris’s side. Tentacles helpfully formed around him, keeping him from collapsing in any direction. It was not at all the crushing embrace Ania had used on him. “Chris,” he said in a soft, woozy voice. “I don’t think Claire and I will survive getting to the surface on our own.”

Claire’s eyes lit up with understanding. She embellished her swaying, a hand going almost absentmindedly to her head as she let her gaze get unfocused. Chris braced her with an arm, anxious in that tense, soldier way of his.

“I think I have a concussion,” Claire slurred.

“You can’t do this,” Chris hissed, fully aware of their bullshit and also of the fact that they were _actually_ injured. Claire likely was concussed, though Leon didn’t know to what extent, and the idea of getting in the water and trying to swim to the surface with his wounds made Leon want to vomit. “You have… to leave me. No, you have to kill me!”

“Don’t, don’t, please…” Claire was suddenly much more lucid. “You’re my brother. You’re the only family I have left. You can’t leave me too.”

“Claire…”

They shared a moment where they spoke to each other with expression alone – a feat more impressive now than usual, given that Chris had a different sort of face. Finally, Chris sighed and his shoulders sagged, a sign that Claire had won for the moment.

“We left the detonation gear with our suits,” Leon told Chris. “Chris, you have to help Claire and me to the surface or else we won’t make it.” He got shakily to his feet. “Can you breathe under water?”

Chris stared at him. “I… don’t know?”

“We can work with that. We need to move.”

Leon started to limp determinedly away. His body throbbed with every step, as if the bottoms of his feet had a direct pathway to his every wound.

“Don’t be so proud,” rumbled Chris. He picked Leon up in one arm, held against his chest like a toddler, and then Claire in the other arm.

“How’s it feel to somehow have even more muscle than before?” Leon asked.

Chris looked at his own body sadly. “At least… I can do some good like this.”

“You saved our lives, Chris,” Claire reminded him. “You’re going to save our lives again. You’re doing great.”

Leon curled his injured arm toward his chest and reluctantly decided to let this happen. His legs tangled with Claire’s and she held his other hand over their knees as Chris casually carried them throughout the entire fucking facility like they weighed nothing more than marshmallows.

Eventually, they circled back to the entrance. The foyer door was unlocked and the vestibule was no longer flooded, only damp.

Chris hesitated there. If he left with them, his life was likely to turn into a hell of experimentation or end in death. If he stayed, he’d either let himself die when the facility blew up or be on the run.

“Stay with us,” Claire said, sensing her brother’s conflict. “We can’t make promises that everything is going to be okay. At least, this way, we can _try_. Please. Wouldn’t you do anything if it was me instead?”

“You deserve the world,” Chris told her.

“Don’t you?” she asked.

Leon bit the inside of his cheek. “Don’t make us grieve for you unless we absolutely have to,” he demanded. “I’ve lost too many people I care about already. Don’t be one of them.”

“I haven’t been nice to you lately. I don’t see how you’d still care for me.”

“You just saved my ass from a sadistic monster and carried me up a fuck ton of stairs because my arm is broken.”

“It’s a little more than broken there, Kennedy.”

“I am working at not thinking about it, thanks, Redfield.”

“Anytime.”

Chris looked from him to Claire and then to the vestibule. “This is going to suck,” he muttered.

“A lot,” Claire agreed. “But at least you’re alive.”

“Am I?”

Leon, curious, pressed his hand over Chris’s mouth. He caught a harsh exhale against his palm. “You’re breathing, at least.”

“That’s something,” Chris agreed bitterly.

“No more stalling, captain,” Leon told him. “Let’s get out of here.”

Claire hugged her monstrous brother around his shoulders. “Together,” she added.

“Okay,” Chris said on a sigh. “Together.”

He helped them into their wet suits, Claire removing glass shards from her own body along the way. Leon may or may not have thrown up at least once while he was maneuvered into his swimming gear, but at least no one judged him. His clavicle held out against the weight of his oxygen tank, so that was a plus.

Chris put down the bombs in the foyer and down the corridor while Claire rigged it, setting a timer for when they should be a safe distance away.

With them dressed up and ready to go, Chris gathered them back into his arms again and walked through the vestibule, into the airlock, and then out into the lake.

There was a moment where Leon wasn’t sure if he was going to sink or swim. The scales made him seem aquatic, but he was heavy like a boulder.

His fish features apparently did not give him any aquatic benefits beyond not drowning. Leon did not see any gills and yet Chris at no point appeared to panic about a lack of oxygen. The way to the surface was slow and interspersed with occasional bouts of floating back toward the bottom of the lake.

Leon closed his eyes and, when he opened them again, he was in a hospital.

Chris Redfield was being detained by the BSAA under supervision of Dr. Rebecca Chambers. Claire was in a separate hospital room for a concussion and back injury. Once they were both checked out, they could discuss visitation rights, as if they were fighting the BSAA for custody of Chris.

The underwater base had been blasted to rubble and cleared away so as not to alarm the park managers or tourists. Basia Kowalczyk had been quietly informed of her daughter’s involvement with Umbrella and of her subsequent death due to infection. Leon was assured that no one was named in the death of Ania Kowalczyk and that her passing had been phrased a consequence of her mutation. Basia, who had loved her daughter a great deal, was heartbroken.

Leon wondered if Basia had ever known what her daughter had gone through in Russia. Did she ever suspect? Did she ever ask? Had she ever made the suggestion that Ania should get therapy?

Leon watched tv through a drug-induced haze. There was a movie about some digitally animated dog, and it reminded him of that one cartoon Sherry liked to watch as a child, _Courage the Cowardly Dog._

 _“The things I do for love,”_ that dog used to say, right before doing something batshit crazy. He felt a strong camaraderie with that dumb dog.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found at least 5 times where I used the word 'foray' instead of 'foyer' and let me assure you, these mean two very different things.


	3. Recovery - Inhuman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Leon discusses male pregnancy and struggles with a desire to carry his own children. He only discusses it, no male pregnancy actually occurs on this story. I wanted to put that out there in case some readers need to prepare themselves.

The good news about having a friend in quarantine and himself being on medical leave was that, suddenly, he and Chris were spending a lot of quality time together.

Leon’s arm was still in a cast and there were stitches where Ania had dug into him, but he was walking on his own and he could almost convince himself he was on vacation.

This meant he needed a good destination. Hence, he walked into Rebecca’s lab with card solitaire and Cards Against Humanity.

Rebecca smiled at the sight of him. “Hey, Leon. How are you holding up?”

“I haven’t fallen apart yet, despite everyone’s best efforts.”

“That’s good! And the arm?”

“Still attached.” He wiggled his fingers, just peeking out of the cast.

She shook her head at him. “I’ve seen you get thrown at cement so many times that I’m surprised you can actually get fall apart.”

“It has actually hurt like a bitch every time I’ve been thrown at something. Anything. I just have a good poker face.”

“Liar,” she teased. “Your eyes give you away.”

“It’s true,” Chris said from his bubble. “Noticed it back when we were trying to take down Arias.”

“Aw, shucks,” Leon deadpanned. “Now I’m embarrassed.”

Chris chuckled. He was stretched across a bed that looked pitifully small under him, belly down. He had recently undergone surgery to remove the tentacles from his back and it had been a success. Rebecca had been able to synthesize a vaccine for Chris in a ridiculously short amount of time and as much as Leon thought they should take some time to test it out on someone who _wasn’t_ Chris, the BSAA disagreed and Rebecca shrugged and agreed with the BSAA. After all, this was the lady who had injected herself with an experimental drug to survive the A-Virus strain not too long ago. Chris had sided with them as well, willing to take the chance.

So far, it looked like Leon had been worried about nothing. There were some features Rebecca thought Chris might have to live with for the rest of his life and other features that should come back. His scales, for example, were sloughing off like he was molting. Patches of gray, _human_ skin were being revealed. Chris hated it because it itched like someone had rolled him in poison ivy, but he was appreciative of getting rid of the scales.

With the patches that were falling off his head, hair was starting to bristle. His jaw was already rough with the beginnings of a beard. The last time Chris had been dunked in water, he’d almost drowned – so, congratulations on no longer having gills, Leon supposed. Rebecca had mentioned that the chances of Chris shrinking to his previous size were very slim if not impossible, so an 8-foot tall Chris was now the norm. His bones were already supersized, the skin had already stretched, and his organs had already accommodated, so there was no going back.

Chris admitted that he could live with all of these things… if not for his face.

Leon thought it was a handsome face. A good man’s face. A face worthy of a bastard of Chris’s caliber.

Chris’s dilemma was that his mouth was still a thin-lipped slit from ear to ear and his triangular shark teeth had decided to stay despite the treatments Chris was receiving.

Rebecca had been pleased to announce that Chris could no longer infect anyone but had found that completely eliminating the virus from Chris’s system would likely kill him. The past few weeks had been a matter of Chris’s body falling into a new sense of equilibrium between BOW and man.

Throughout the process, Rebecca performed her experiments to test his abilities and the BSAA sent representatives to gather reports on his progress. Claire snuck in to see Chris whenever she could and Leon may or may not live in Rebecca’s lab at this point.

“Well,” Rebecca said loudly. She put her key card down on her desk in clear view. “I am _starving_. I’m going to get lunch now. Remember, Leon, Chris is in quarantine.”

“Oh, I know.”

“Which means no using my key card to go into the quarantine bubble to play cards with him for the exact 50 minutes I will be out of my lab.”

“Of course,” Leon muttered, setting his watch for 48 minutes, just in case she decided to come back early.

“Would you like anything while I’m out?”

“No, I’m good.” He held up the two coffees he had gotten from the nearest local café. One was in the largest size he could find and the other was also in the largest size he could find because he had been trying to not touch alcohol and was perhaps exhausted to tears. “Thanks, though.”

“In that case, I will be off! You two be good.”

“Bye, Rebecca,” Chris called. Leon waved a coffee farewell.

She was as far as outside the door when Leon had the key card in his hand and was swiping into Chris’s bubble.

“This is for you,” he said, handing over one of the coffees.

“You’re a saint, Kennedy.”

“Haven’t heard that one before, but thanks.”

Chris gave him an admonishing look. “You’re great, Leon,” he said, suddenly far too serious and earnest. “Thank you. I’d be out of my mind by now if it wasn’t for you checking up on me.”

“What about Sherry? She told me she’s been visiting you.”

Chris didn’t hide his grimace in time and was subjected to a murderous glare. “Sherry’s a great young lady, of course, but she is… She may or may not have a very obvious crush right now on someone _I_ think is a total dick.”

“It’s Jake.” Leon sighed. “I already know. He is a total fucking dick.” He took a drag of his coffee. “But Sherry _is_ grown… nothing I can do about it except threaten his life and get laughed at for it.”

“Jake laughs at you when you threaten his life?”

“Him too, but I was thinking of Sherry.”

He’d started working for the government to keep Sherry safe all those years ago. He couldn’t regret it. He didn’t regret it. Even now, tired and broken, at least Sherry had had a semi-normal childhood with him and Claire.

He smiled softly at the thought of her. He should spend more time with her now that he had time to spend. With his injuries, no one could pull that ‘We need you right now or else the world will end’ bullshit that so often got him in trouble.

“Leon… why haven’t you had more kids?” Chris asked.

“This isn’t the kind of life I can bring a baby into.”

Chris shook his head. “I meant, why not adopt more older kids?”

“This isn’t the kind of life I can bring a _kid_ into either. Sherry was already in this life before I got recruited.”

“When you were young and you didn’t know better about the future,” Chris began, “how many kids did you want?”

Leon stared at his coffee. “Does it matter? It’s never going to happen.”

“I think you’re more capable of having kids right now than I am,” Chris pointed out. “This isn’t the kind of face that gets approved as an adoptive father. You, though… you have a good face.”

Leon snorted. “Ah, is that what my face is good for? Getting approved for adoption?”

“It’s a stern but gentle fatherly face. It’s definitely what your face is good for.”

Leon handed over Cards Against Humanity for Chris to deal with. His talons had been filed down, but he had to work on dexterity with those sausage fingers of his.

“You’ve wanted kids?” Leon asked.

“Yeah,” Chris answered softly. “Thought I’d have two of them so that they’d never be alone.” Like him and Claire.

Leon kicked Chris’s leg until the man moved over and made space for them both on his tiny mattress. There was an equally tiny table with a chair, and the bubble had been connected to the restroom in Rebecca’s lab with its emergency shower so that Chris could have some privacy and human comfort. Beyond that, the bubble was empty except for a pile of books by the bed with pages that had been accidentally ripped by Chris’s hands.

Leon still chose to sit by Chris rather than at the tiny table.

“I didn’t get along with my family,” Leon admitted “I was an only child and they loved me unconditionally when I was a little kid… Then I came out to them and it changed. It was like I killed their child and they couldn’t cope with it, even though I was still right there. I didn’t think much of having kids until after my dad stopped talking to me. Then I wanted kids just to prove that I would be a better father. After Sherry, I realized that… I actually want kids because _I_ want them.”

He sipped at his coffee. Chris was still working at getting the cards out of the box without tearing the box apart. “Have you ever heard of Thomas Beatie?” Leon asked.

“No,” Chris grunted. “Who’s that?”

“He’s had four kids.”

“Good for him?”

“He carried all of them because his then-wife was infertile.”

Chris paused. “Do you want to have your own kids?”

“Sometimes. I would have to stop taking T, though, and my chances of getting pregnant are pretty low after all these years.” He sighed. “I’d have to find a sperm donor.”

Chris crushed the Cards Against Humanity box in his fist. “Shit!”

Leon frowned at him. “Chris?”

“Yeah, fuck, sorry… Just… thinking.”

“Right,” Leon drawled. “On top of that, my menstrual cycle would start up again and my body could start changing. It’s probably for the best that I can’t have kids right now.”

Chris gave him back the box and took Card Solitaire from him. “You’re a great father,” he told Leon. “You should get to live a life where you can _be_ a father.”

“Claire would make a great mom.”

“She’s too young to be thinking about that.”

Leon outright laughed at him.

“Shut up! We both know we will never approve of anyone she would want to make a baby with.”

Not that Claire would ask for their approval. She would want their support but wouldn’t let their feelings control her love life.

“You’re not wrong. Her taste in guys is shit. I blame you.”

“Why are you blaming me for that?”

“Weren’t you the guy that raised her? She’s trying so hard to make sure she doesn’t date anyone like her big brother that she’s avoiding any man with a single good quality.”

“Are you saying that I have all the good qualities?”

“You’re also an asshole and a bastard, but, yeah, you’ve got some good qualities.”

“Aw, thanks. You’re so sweet to me, Leon.”

“I make an effort.”

There was silence for a moment as Chris worked at opening the tiny card box without ripping it. “You’re a good man,” Chris pointed out. “Maybe you and Claire can raise another kid together.”

Leon looked at him, wide-eyed and then weary. “Chris…”

“I know you two aren’t like that,” Chris interjected. “You two kept Sherry alive and did the best you could with what you had to make her happy. You raised her together.”

“With an exorbitant number of U.S. marshals that doubled as foster families, yeah.”

“You could raise another kid together. If you don’t want to carry it, then Claire can. If you do, then Claire will definitely keep the kitchen stocked with peanut butter and pickles for you.”

“She would probably have a psychic ability to know what my cravings are before I do,” Leon mused. His fingers drummed thoughtfully over his belly.

“If they ever let me out of here, I could help to.”

Leon let himself slide sideways, just enough to thump his head against Chris’s side. “It takes a village to raise a child?”

“If you want.”

“I do. Want that. That’s if we ever get around to having another kid, though.”

Chris cheered as he finally opened the tiny box with minimal damage. Leon gave an approving grunt.

He tipped the box and squeezed it gently so that the cards would slip into one of his wide palms. He handed the box to Leon and started working on shuffling.

Cards kept falling out of his hands. Leon patiently retrieved and returned them, though his shoulder ached every time he bent forward.

They played a careful gave of War – careful because if Chris hit the bed slightly too hard, there wouldn’t be a functioning bed anymore, and because it took him time to pick the cards back off the bed. It was toward the end of Rebecca’s lunch break and Leon was getting ready to leave the bubble.

“Hey, Leon.”

He glanced back. “Yeah?”

“Thank you… for being my friend right now. I know I haven’t always been kind to you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Leon said. “I haven’t always been nice to you either.”

“I’ve had worse happen to me than someone calling me the BSAA’s golden boy.” He gestured to himself as an example.

The problem was, even when he looked like a Tyrant with a shark’s mouth, Leon thought he was handsome. Inhuman and still so good to look at and know that he was alive.

“You’re looking better,” is what he said, because he didn’t want to discuss how he would have been willing to fuck a fish man had the opportunity presented itself before Rebecca administered the cure and was still willing to now if Chris so much as hinted at the possibility.

“I’m never going to be the way I was.”

“That could be a good thing.”

“How?”

“That remains to be seen.”

“You can’t think of anything.”

“I think you look good, Chris,” Leon finally admitted. “With your mutations, you could do a lot of good out there too. Whenever they let you out of the bubble.”

“I’m going to die in this bubble.”

“Fuck, I hope not.”

His alarm went off. Reluctantly, he left the bubble and let it automatically lock behind him. He placed the key card back down on the desk and discarded their empty coffee containers as well as the destroyed Cards Against Humanity game.

Rebecca returned a minute after. “What did I miss?” She smiled beatifically and leaned against the desk by Leon. She took a sip of her own coffee.

“Rebecca,” Chris began curiously, “have you ever wanted babies?”

Rebecca choked and spat her too-sweet coffee in Leon’s face.

~::~

 _“I think he’s trying to breed,”_ Rebecca told him through video chat later in the week. He had tried to come back the next day after his and Chris’s baby talk, but Rebecca had reluctantly turned him away. She said Chris was fine, but she wanted to observe him for a bit. Something in his behavior had raised some red flags for her.

By day three, Leon was blocked from the guest list. Chris was fine, Rebecca continued to assure Leon, who were starting to draft a plan for breaking Chris out of the bubble. He was just… saying things. Making things. Leon called Claire to vent and discovered that he was the _only one_ blocked from the guest list. Whatever Chris was doing, it was directly connected to Leon.

By day five, she sent him a video of Chris arranging and rearranging his bed and blanket for thirty minutes. He had one pillow, one blanket, a mattress, and a metal frame. He bent the metal until it curved upward on all sides, tore the mattress apart to fill the basin he had created, and then laid the blanket over it. His longest debate was in putting the pillow in the makeshift crib and then taking it out.

After some time, he looked up at Rebecca and said, “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Oh, God,” Leon groaned after watching the video. Into the group chat between him, Claire, and Rebecca, he typed: _This might be my fault._

 _I’ve always wanted a little niece to spoil_ , Claire responded. She sent a winky face.

 _I don’t think he is fully aware of what he is doing,_ Rebecca warned them.

Now it was day 6 and they were having this discussion.

Leon had already gotten the feeling that Chris wanted to breed by him distorting his bed into a baby crib fit for a woodland animal. He’d rather it be a conscious decision, though, than the result of the remnants of the virus in his body telling him, _Well, time to spread the I-virus to the next generation._

Then he imagined having a colossal-sized infant with tentacles and dagger teeth… Chris’s eyes… Fuck, those talons would tear him apart, though. Any baby of Chris’s would likely make their own hole coming out.

His mind got stuck on an image of a normal-looking infant, human, embraced in Chris’s massive arms and pressed safely to a barrel chest. He could hear Chris humming a soft lullaby, see the soft edges of his loving expression.

Leon shoved the fantasy back. It wasn’t possible now, even if Leon did decide to have his own kids. Even if Chris _did_ want to be the other father of his children. Even if _Chris Redfield_ wanted to have a family with him.

“Well, I can’t be bred right now,” he drawled. “So I don’t see why I have to stay away.”

 _“Given the relationship you two have,”_ she reasoned, _“I think he still might be willing to try. I’m hoping that, with the next round of treatment, he’ll stop trying to turn his room into a nursery…. No! No, put that down!”_ She sounded like she was scolding a bad dog. Leon distantly heard Chris’s contrite voice but couldn’t make out the words. _“That is_ not _what that’s for, Chris. That is a sink!”_ She gave her attention back to Leon. _“I’m sorry, but I think we should wait another week before you visit. He is still in control of himself, but, since he can’t explain WHY HE NEEDED TO TEAR THE SINK OUT OF THE BATHROOM,”_ she raised her voice, obviously so that Chris would know she was talking about him, _“I would rather not take any chances.”_

There was another murmur in the background.

 _“I know you would never, Chris,”_ Rebecca reassured him. _“But let’s play it safe for now, okay?”_

Chris’s voice again, still incomprehensible through the phone.

 _“No, Leon is not coming over right now.”_ There was a pause. _“Chris… please put that down.”_

Leon went from slouched over his kitchen counter to launching himself into his shoes in seconds. The tone of Rebecca’s voice was cautious, no longer playful. Chris was actually doing something right now that was upsetting versus the semi-amusing antics he had been up to.

“What’s going on, Rebecca?” Leon demanded to know, grabbing his keys.

 _“Sorry, there was a moment. You don’t have to worry! He’s fine now.”_ Chris’s sad voice in the background. _“I know, Chris. It’s okay! You didn’t do anything wrong.”_ To Leon, with regret, she said, _“It really is for the best that you stay away for now. I’ll let you know when you can come back as soon as possible, promise!”_

He really wanted to ask about this “moment”. What had it been? Had Chris mutated? Had Chris lost his mind for a split second? Had Chris gotten violent?

He forced himself to put his keys back down and retreated to his living room. A mystery novel was split open on the armrest of his recliner, his preferred location for sleep and relaxation. He was so used to catching some shut-eye while in transit or against a wall that he wasn’t always comfortable lying on a flat surface. His mattress was closer to decorative at this point.

“Are you sure?” Leon asked, eyebrows pulled together and frowning.

_“Yeah, I’m sure!”_

They gave their farewells and hung up, Leon still uneasy. He was debating calling Claire and going into more detail about their escape plan for Chris when Rebecca sent him a picture.

It was of Chris, of course. Rebecca had pulled in a flatscreen tv for Chris to watch through the wall of his bubble. His expression was serious, concentrated on what he was hearing as he stood in the center of his bubble as if he was waiting for orders to move out.

In his massive arms, he cradled his pillow like a newborn. Leon couldn’t even tell if he knew he was doing it.

Warmth flooded his chest. He _wanted_ that. Did he want that enough to go off his T, though? He wasn’t sure. He hadn’t necessarily been uncomfortably in his body before starting T, but he’d gotten so used to his body with T that he wasn’t sure if he was willing to risk the physical changes that would come with stopping his injections and getting pregnant.

He looked at the picture again.

Besides, any child of Chris’s was likely to have at least some of his mutations. And their lives were dangerous.

Chris only wanted kids right now because the virus in him demanded that it be spread biologically. The urge would go away. Chris would undoubtedly get embarrassed and demand they never talk about it again.

Leon saved the image in his phone.

It was cute.

~::~

Three weeks later, Leon was allowed back in the building and Claire accompanied him. He was on the mend, just waiting for his cast to come off, and Claire had already gone back to work for TerraSave.

The first hint that something was wrong was the sound of Rebecca yelling, even through her shut door. Rebecca as a rule did not _yell_. Not like that, not when she was angry. Her voice got harsh and accusatory when she was angry, but not loud.

Claire and Leon rushed into the lab, ready to fight.

Instantly, they could see the problem: The bubble was empty. An agent with a BSAA badge on his flak jacket was trying to calmly discuss with Rebecca why the BSAA had felt Chris was okay to go back in the field as a specialist agent. Leon caught the words, “Captain Redfield can save more lives now than he ever has and we have you to thank for your hard work in making this possible.” They sounded recited from an index card.

Claire grabbed the bastard by the back of his jacket and hauling him around. Her voice was a low, dangerous hiss, teeth bared, as she glared at the agent. “Where. Is. He?”

The agent remained remarkably unshaken by her rage. “Ms. Redfield, we sent him out on a probationary test with Gamma Team. This mission is low-risk and is meant to assess his ability to work on the field with other individuals.”

“And I bet those individuals are prepared to take him down if he so much as sneezes?” Leon interjected.

“If sneezing causes him to lose control of himself, then, yes.”

“This goes against the contract I made with the BSAA, Agent Yemen!” Rebecca snapped. “By violating the terms and conditions of our agreement, I am within my rights to not only take the BSAA to court, but to press criminal charges for abduction and forced labor of my patient.”

The agent was unmoved. “Captain Redfield wanted to go.”

“Of course he did,” Leon growled. He didn’t doubt it. He could almost see the entire scene play down: The BSAA, walking in and giving their spiel of, “we need you or else the world will end in fire and brimstone” – which, of course, Chris had himself mastered Leon recalled bitterly – and Chris, who couldn’t say no to save his fucking life, giving a solemn “I’m in.”

“He consented to being recruited for this mission,” the agent pointed out.

Rebecca deflated, anger bleeding to exhaustion and uncertainty.

“It’s not consent if you guilt-tripped him into doing it!” Claire yelled at him.

The truth was ugly, but… “I don’t think we can get him back right now,” Leon told Claire. “How about we save this fight for if it turns out they stuck him in a cell somewhere?”

“If he gets hurt in anyway,” Claire snarled at the agent, “I am coming straight for _you_.”

The agent glared back. “Is that a threat?”

“You know,” Rebecca began in a soft, wondering tone. “I have done a great deal of research on several virus strains in this very lab. Sometimes, I worry that someone could accidentally get infected just by sitting in this room, and that I might not be able to cure them.” She gazed up at the agent with innocence. “Accidents are more likely to happen if I’m worried about what is happening to my good friend Chris.”

 _That_ was a fucking threat, and artfully given. Rebecca might be questioned for carelessness, but not intent.

The agent finally showed a hint of uncertainty. He glanced at Leon, as if for support.

He shrugged. “My hearing must be off because I didn’t hear shit.”

He could see the agent’s jaw clench right before he excused himself and marched out.

Rebecca sighed deeply and fell against her desk. Her head landed in her hands as she groaned. “Time for another waiting game, I guess. We see if they bring him back.”

“If they don’t, we go after him,” Claire stated. She stood next to Rebecca and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, rubbing her upper arm comfortingly.

“Obviously,” Leon agreed.

Rebecca glanced at them and smiled. “Sounds like fun.”

~::~

Chris _did_ end up coming back – but not to the bubble. After the test run, the BSAA moved him to headquarters. His apartment was put up for sale and all of his personal items retrieved. It made sense; Chris was never going to look completely human again, and the sight of him in a world ravaged by bioterrorism would terrify any civilian. He wasn’t going to be able to blend in.

Leon still wondered if Chris could be okay with it in time. If he had decided that this was the best course of action or if the BSAA had done it without even running it by him first. Leon went to go visit Chris at BSAA HQ but was told that Chris was already gone again. Not every mission stopped a world domination plan, but there was always something to do in the BSAA. With Chris starting out small for them to test his control and abilities, he was kept constantly busy for months after being released from his bubble. He figured out voice-to-text and kept in contact with Leon and Claire, but communications were not frequent.

Leon was back in the field by the time Chris did get a break and, of course, got sent out almost as soon as he got Chris’s voicemail saying that he had some free time if Leon wanted to come over.

 _I can’t_ , he texted bitterly. _Now I have a mission._

 _Bad timing_ , Chris sent back. Leon wondered if he was upset by this as Leon was. They had finally been bonding and now they were back where they started: Too busy to get to know each other.

He _would_ have had time to hang out with Chris if it hadn’t been for the president’s Chief of Staff, Marlin Tuffet, getting kidnapped and ransomed. Leon wasn’t as close with this president as he had been with President Graham, but they were tolerant enough of each other. It was his Chief of Staff that made Leon want to shoot someone. The man was Republican to the bone and always threw his support behind decisions that would strip protections from marginalized populations. Leon was convinced that the man was shady but the president wouldn’t hear him out about it.

Now that the Chief of Staff was missing somewhere in Pevek, Russia, Leon was being deployed to singlehandedly save his sorry ass.

Chris sent him a _Good Luck_ text and Leon left the country with the belief that this wouldn’t be too hard. As far as they were aware, there shouldn’t be any BOWs or zombies or anything else related to bioterrorism. This should just be a normal abduction.

His standards for easy had obviously been skewed by years of dealing with this bullshit.

Leon got to the location intel had said the Chief of Staff was likely being held at. Getting in was ridiculously easy with only a scant number of security guards that didn’t even shoot at him. He incapacitated them and secured them in a closet full of cleaning supplies. The location was a small mansion, recently placed on the market for purchase. Intel told him that the property did not currently belong to anyone, but facilities were still operating. This meant that he had electricity and running water. He was still moderately surprised to walk in and find that the heat was on. The mansion was clean and well cared for, light glowing golden against the tastefully tiled floors from overhanging chandeliers. The corridors had plush, deep blue carpeting and were lined with electric candelabras.

This place wouldn’t have any problem selling if it wasn’t for it being part of an active terrorist investigation.

He took down two more guards and contained them in a bedroom, the furniture covered with white sheets. He took one of the sheets over a dresser to tie them together, revealing a… a speargun. A motherfucking speargun.

Leon stared at it in dread. When weapons started showing up in places they shouldn’t, it usually meant that his life was about to take a turn for the worse. It truly felt like he lived in a videogame sometimes.

“Still would prefer a rocket launcher,” he muttered, but took it anyway. It didn’t have any shafts with it… obviously.

He bet if he looked from room to room, he’d find some.

“This is for underwater game,” He muttered to himself. Leon looked about himself wearily. Admittedly, Pevek was bordered by the East Siberian Sea, but his location was miles away from the coast.

“I’ll take what I can get.”

Searching from room to room as he went down the corridor, he came across a door that was locked. It was decorated with a water motif.

“Fuck this shit.”

The corridor led into a sitting room with a wall-to-wall aquarium. He saw eels, trout, and other freshwater species lazily swimming about.

Quick as lightning, something _huge_ swam at the glass and snapped up an eel between dagger teeth. Leon startled back a step as the monstrous fish turned its bulk away from the glass, a milky eye on him.

“If I had to guess,” Leon muttered, “I would say you look exactly like the monster that took Gavin’s legs.”

It looked like a trout, one that was half-rotten, longer than Leon was tall, and as wide as two of him from pectoral fins to dorsal fin. He made the aquarium look small, even though it went from floor to ceiling and spanned not only the sitting room but continued down the corridor.

In its right-side gills was a flash of color. A golden key with a water motif inlaid in it.

“Damn it.”

He was going to have to figure out how to get in there and kill it, wasn’t he?

He definitely couldn’t let it live. His gun would be too loud and it would depend on the trout coming out of the water long enough for him to shoot it. The speargun was making a lot more sense now.

Except…

“Why are you even here?” he asked the monster.

The place was for sale. It made sense for a terrorist group to lay low here for a few days with a hostage, but to fill this massive aquarium bigger than Leon’s entire apartment and toss in an entire aquatic ecosystem plus a monster trout?

Something was very wrong.

He needed to find the shafts, go fishing, and then get into that locked room, whatever it may contain. Hell, he may have to fight this monster with what he had and then find out afterward that the shafts were behind that water motif door the whole time. That would really piss him off.

As he edged down the corridor, the monster lazily swam beside him. It always kept him in sight, nudging the glass separating them every few meters as if to test for weakness.

“I hate my job.”

Just to get away from the monster for a few minutes, he took a left at the end of the corridor. The aquarium continued on the right side, meaning that the trout couldn’t follow him anymore.

He found another security guard and knocked him out before he could react. Putting him in a closet, he found a bundle of shafts in a mop bucket.

Awesome. This could work out for him.

Even as he wrapped his hand around the shafts, already planning on backtracking, the closet door was ripped off its hinges behind him.

He spun around, pistol up, and came face to face with a BOW that looked too familiar.

It was Chris before he got treated, but also even less human than Chris had been. It had no neck, no defined jaw. Its head was a blob on its menacing shoulders and its mouth stretched across the entire length of it, eyes small and beady in its ugly face. It was so tall that there was no way around it to get out of the closet.

He recalled what Ania had said about the mutations getting weaker every generation. This victim had to be a part of an earlier generation where the physical effects of the mutations were stronger.

Leon swung the speargun across his chest and into his arms as he nabbed one of the shafts and prepared the firearm. The BOW hissed, squeezing into the closet with him.

Leon was about to shoot when he was reintroduced to an aspect of Chris that had already been removed: Tentacles.

They shot out and grabbed him by his limbs, shoving him into the shelving unit behind him. The pressure on his recently healed arm made him yell.

“We have him,” came a voice just beyond the BOW. A pause. “We will take you to speak with our boss now, Mr. Kennedy. She is ready for you.”

“What?”

The BOW used its tentacles to cinch Leon’s arms against his sides, wrapping around his thighs and calves as well. There was no escape unless the BOW decided to let him go.

He was carried out of the closet and back into the corridor, the speargun and the shafts left behind. The woman he was met with had the face of a hardened soldier and dressed like security. She had an earpiece in which she was speaking to someone.

The stranger did not bother to explain anything to him. She nodded at something she heard and then looked up at the BOW. “She wants him unconscious. Knock him out.”

Leon got as far as, “I would – ” and he meant to say, _“I would rather you not do that”_ , but he never got the chance.

A tentacle wrapped around his throat and constricted, strangling him until everything was dark and fuzzy…


	4. Retrieval - Underestimation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up, Leon gets tortured. There is no sexual torture, there is no transphobia, there is just Leon getting hurt and then someone trying to kill him like usual.

Leon woke up slowly to burning, stinging pain all over his body. Instinctively, he flinched and found that that made the pain _worse_.

His eyes opened slowly, head and neck aching. Chin bobbed toward his chest, he was greeted with the sight of his own naked body except he had been allowed to keep the dignity of his briefs. Waking up without his clothes would usually raise some very distinct, ‘Am I about to get raped’ concerns, but a glance assured him that that was not why he had been stripped.

He was naked so that the barbed wire securing him to his heavy metal chair snagged directly into his flesh, tearing him apart every time he struggled. Because the barbed wire was wrapped around and under the metal chair – which he saw by looking down was bolted into the ground – the back of his torso was largely safe from injury. The barbed wire did secure each arm to separate chair arms and his legs were _blazing_ with agony where they were forcibly braced against the legs of the chair. He could move his head but there was barbed wire caught on his collarbone, making him feel like another twitch would have someone reeling him in like a fish.

He hurt so much that stopping himself from crying out in pain took a superhero level of control.

Leon forced himself to focus on the room around him. There were double-doors to one side and then no other furniture but the torture device he inhabited.

Ania’s mother, three I-virus variant Tyrants, the security guard, and Chief of Staff Marlin Tuffet were standing in the room with him. Tuffet was arguing with Basia.

“I got you what you wanted!” Tuffet yelled. “You promised me a good deal of money and now you’re telling me that you aren’t going to uphold your end of the bargain? I will ruin you, you bitch!”

Of fucking course. Of _fucking course_.

Tuffet had never been kidnapped. This had been a trap. A trap for Leon set by Ania’s mother… but why? All the intel he had reviewed said that Basia had no idea what her daughter had been up to. Even if she had, she never should have been able to find out about his involvement in Ania’s downfall.

The current situation told him that Basia was much more involved than anyone had been led to believe.

“You are a traitor to your country,” Basia told the American Chief of Staff. “I was never going to pay you.”

Tuffet snarled and launched himself at the elderly woman. A single shot rang out and his body dropped to the ground.

The security guard holstered her firearm.

“Darling, please take care of the mess,” Basia commanded. Her security guard nodded and lifted the dead weight over her shoulder almost effortlessly before walking out. Basia noticed that Leon was watching and stared dully back at him. “She is good at her job. I am glad I was able to employ her. You will never see her again, Mr. Kennedy.”

“Why is that?” Leon asked.

“I am going to kill you,” Basia told him. From her cardigan’s pocket, she pulled out a vial. From the other pocket, she showed him a needle gun injector. She clipped the vial into the gun, never looking away from him.

Leon sneered at her. “And what kind of virus is that?” he asked. “Are you going to inject me and it will take me 24 hours to turn into a zombie? Or will it be instantaneous?”

She raised a brow. “Neither, Mr. Kennedy. This is the I-virus, the t-Virus variant that my daughter worked so long to perfect. She sent me a vial from your Chris Redfield right after she infected herself. She was so proud of herself… She finally felt safe in her own skin.”

Leon felt dread, expression smoothing to hide his inner turmoil. “You’re going to inject yourself.”

She nodded. “You are not so stupid for an American.”

“Why?” he asked.

“My daughter was killed by your Chris Redfield and her remains lost in a BSAA-sanctioned explosion,” she said, voice tight and angry. “And you ask me why I would kill you?”

“You’re right, it’s obvious when you put it that way. Let me try a different question: How do you know all of this?”

“I have always had a backdoor into my daughter’s surveillance system,” Basia informed him. “I _watched_ as your man killed my daughter. I was _helpless_ to save her!” Her bottom lip trembled. Forcibly, she turned it up into a sharp, fragile smile.

 _‘Not fragile like a flower,’_ Leon recalled, _‘Fragile like a bomb.’_

This woman was about to detonate.

“I have been planning,” she told him. “The BSAA received a tip shortly after you left the States. They know that the I-virus is here in this mansion that I have filled with the creatures my daughter has created. From what I understand, the DSO has had no reason to tell the BSAA that you are already here? Your man will arrive and he will watch you die.”

“He’s not my man.”

“I saw him and you together in the lab. He is your man.”

“If you kill me, nothing will save your life,” Leon warned her. He knew she was wrong, that he wasn’t the most important person in the world to Chris – probably wasn’t even in his Top 5 – but Chris was loyal without end and Leon’s death would not go unanswered.

She looked at him with a confused fondness that a mother would wear when their child said something unexpectedly foolish. “I do not care about my life, Mr. Kennedy,” she informed him. “My only child is dead. She was my best friend, the light of my life, my reason for existing. Everything terrible that has happened to her is my fault and I will right my wrongs no matter the cost.”

“But, it was her father…”

“I never should have trusted him!” Her eyes shined with tears and her hands clenched on the gun, clutching it to her bosom like she was trying to protect an infant. “There are good reasons why I divorced him. I convinced myself that, even if he was a poor husband, he could still be a good father. I was wrong. My child was hurt and abused because of my poor judgement!” She sucked in a deep, unsteady breath and let it out slowly.

“Ania told us about her childhood with Maksim,” Leon said. “She made it sound like you never knew. But you always knew, didn’t you?”

“ _Maksim_ ,” she hissed. She gestured to one of the I-virus variant Tyrants behind her. “This is what I have done to Maksim! I let him live for _years_ , knowing I did not have the means to make him suffer the way I wanted him to.” She turned partly to look at the monster closest to the double doors. “He used my daughter like a toy. Now he is _my_ toy.”

“You could have gotten Ania help,” Leon pointed out. “You could have helped her.”

“I _did_! I sent a boy to bring her home and then I did everything in my power to make her happy, to make her feel safe. I lived for years with a child that would not bathe, that would not take care of herself, afraid that I would wake up one day and find that she had taken her own life. When she discovered the t-Virus, she… she changed. She aspired to be more successful and powerful so that she could harness the t-Virus and become _untouchable_.”

“Probably a good thing you never told her that you knew,” Leon muttered. “She made it clear to me that she killed everyone she opened up to.”

“She did not want to trouble me with her trauma. She only wanted to include me in her success. My daughter had such a fire in her when she discussed becoming a benefactor of Umbrella with me. She had finally found something to be passionate about without fear…” Basia sobbed. “Now she is gone. She finally got what she wanted and your Chris Redfield _killed her_!” She sharply turned about, back to Leon as she tried to muffle her sobs. Basia paced to the door and, by the time she turned around, she had gathered her wits once more.

“No, Mr. Kennedy, I do not care if I die,” she repeated calmly. “I want Mr. Redfield here to watch me kill you. I want to see the look of understanding and anguish on his face when he realizes that you are gone and there is nothing he can do to bring you back. I want to see him beg and barter to a God that does not listen for your life and then grieve for you, knowing that it was me who took you from him. I want his suffering.”

Her heels clicked as she approached and brushed Leon’s hair from his forehead gently, eyes soft and distant.

“Whether I live or die does not matter as long as I can witness the _exact_ moment he understands that nothing he can do will ever bring you back to his side.”

“You are really overestimating how much I matter to him.”

“I believe you are underestimating yourself.” Her fingers just slightly grazed the scars under his pecs. She gave him a knowing look. “My daughter hurt you in the end. I know she was not well. As an apology, I will at least let you die with some dignity, Mr. Kennedy.”

That probably explained why he was still wearing his briefs. He was nauseated at the realization that someone had to have checked under them.

“Thanks,” he muttered. “That’s more than most people would give me.”

~::~

Basia had left him alone, even taking her BOWs with her. Leon wasn’t able to go anywhere, so he couldn’t even blame her for leaving him without supervision. He was focusing on breathing as evenly and moderately as possible to stop the barbed wire from tearing into him anymore than it already had. His struggles would only make his suffering worse with no reward of escape.

The pain was constant, building into a migraine as his brain tried to control the sensory input. It felt like a century of being awake in agony. He almost wanted Basia to come back just for a distraction. He tried counting up, but it felt like he was timing himself and the pain built with each second. He stared at the floor and counted boards. Eventually, he tried to meditate himself to sleep. He managed to doze at one point, then startled awake at the sound of footsteps outside of the doors. The barbed wire tore into his outer wrists and inner elbows, making him yell.

The footsteps continued onward, heavy enough to be one of the BOWs.

Leon wished he would just pass out from pain or blood loss. Any sort of reprieve from the pain and the inability to escape it would be greatly appreciated.

He was almost delirious by the time the double doors burst open an eternity later.

“Leon!” Chris folded forward to fit through the frame. He was carrying… a motherfucking rocket launcher. “What are you doing here?’

Leon stared at him despondently. “Where did you find that?”

“What?” Chris looked down at the weapon and then frowned severely at him. “Get your priorities straight, Kennedy, it’s time to get you out of here.”

Leon glanced past him at the BSAA agent he had brought. It was the same man who had been sent to tell them that Chris was back in active duty and wouldn’t be returning to Rebecca’s lab. “Where did he find that?”

The agent sneered but deigned to answer. “There was a giant trout. It had a key in its gills with a water motif. We used it on the door that matched and the room had the rocket launcher, bullets for our guns, and a picture of Basia Kowalczyk with her daughter.”

“Of fucking course it was behind the locked door. Where else would it be?” Leon let his chin sag toward his chest. Chris had already put the speargun down and was kneeling in front of him, grimacing as he looked at the barbed wire digging into Leon’s naked skin. His hands wavered, too large for the delicate process of freeing Leon. “Now answer my question,” Chris growled. “Why are you even _here_? You’re supposed to be retrieving a government employee, aren’t you?”

Leon had no space between him and the barbs to lean forward and bridge the gap between them, but he tried. Tried to give them a moment of privacy for this. “The only way you can get me out of here is if your partner over there has plyers and a delicate touch. I know you don’t want to leave me, but this is a trap. Basia, Ania’s mother, set this up. She knows it was us who took down her daughter. She knew about Ania’s involvement with Umbrella the entire time. She wants to make you suffer.”

“She’s succeeding,” Chris hissed. His hands still wavered above Leon. “Yemen!” he barked. “Get over here.”

“Yes, sir.” Yemen crouched opposite of Chris and just looked.

“Any day now, Yemen,” Chris snapped.

“I don’t have anything to cut through the wire without cutting him too.”

Chris hissed his displeasure, triangular teeth bared. “Wait, the room where we got the rocket launcher – there were plyers in that one drawer.”

“As I recall, sir, you said, and I quote, ‘What the hell would we need these for’, and then tossed them aside.”

“I should have thought smart about that…. Maybe if we can find the ends of the wire, we can try to pull it off.” He leaned over Leon to look for these ends. He was finally close enough that Leon could thump his head against Chris’s chest.

“You have to go, Chris,” he told him. “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“That doesn’t happen often these days,” Chris reminded him.

Leon might not be the love of Chris’s life, but he could easily recall how protective Chris was of his people, how he grieved for them and how he fought for them. Leon knew that the other man would get over his death, but he still wanted to save Chris from having to witness it. He had seen too many of his teammates die already, most in a horrible fashion.

“Yemen, take the rocket launcher and go get the pliers.”

“Yes, sir!”

The agent took up the rocket launcher and rushed away. While they waited for Yemen, there was nothing Chris could do. He stayed where he was and let Leon use him to rest his head, holding the rest of his body away so that he did not accidentally press the barbs deeper into Leon’s skin.

“Did they do anything to you?”

Leon snorted. “Beyond this? No, they’ve been really good hosts. I would definitely consider vacationing here again.”

“Asshole.”

“It was Marlin Tuffet,” Leon told him. “He wasn’t a hostage. He had struck a deal with Basia to act like a hostage so that I would be sent out to retrieve him.”

“He must be on the run. They’re still waiting for both of you to return.”

“Once Basia had me, she killed him. She didn’t need him for anything else.”

“I have to say, he had it coming.”

“She’s already injected herself with the I-virus.”

“So we’ll be an even match if we end up having to fight her. Have to admit, the rocket launcher gives us an advantage. Yemen and I ran into another I-virus BOW on our way in, looked just like the one that gave me the virus back in Poland.”

“There are two more, not including Basia. She and Ania were sharing data the entire time. We thought your team had successfully destroyed all of the research that happened at that lab, but Basia has it all.”

“That’s not good. We’ve had no indication that she is involved at all. She retired years ago and has spoken against Ania’s public hatred of Russia.”

“She told me that she would do anything to make her daughter happy.”

“She is definitely not happy that I killed her daughter, then. That explains why she wants to kill me so badly.”

“Chris,” Leon said. “She doesn’t want to kill you.”

The other man pulled back enough to study Leon’s face. “Is she going to put me in a capsule too?”

“She said she’s going to kill me in front of you,” Leon told him softly. “She wants to see what you look like when you watch me die.”

Chris’s face smoothed out in surprise and then in fear.

Absolute fear.

“Don’t give her what she wants,” Leon demanded. “Leave now. Get Yemen and go.”

“I can’t leave you, Leon.”

“It’s better than watching me die. You can’t get me out of this chair and Yemen’s not going to have enough time to cut me loose before Basia shows up with her BOWs. You don’t have a choice.”

“Fuck you, I do have a choice.”

“Oh, yeah? And what’s _that_?”

“I’m going to fight them all and win.”

Leon’s eyes rolled so far back, he could almost see the _‘This fucking IDIOT’_ sign his brain was holding up. “Okay, let me rephrase. You don’t have any _realistic_ choice. Maybe you have the I-virus, but so do they and they outnumber you.”

The double-doors behind Chris creaked open.

“We also have a rocket launcher and a speargun,” Chris pointed out. “Those will help.”

Leon looked past Chris and felt the certainty of his death wash over him. “No, they won’t.”

“And why _not_ , Agent Cynical?”

“Because Yemen is a traitor.”

Chris followed his line of sight, upper body twisting to see that Yemen had, in fact, returned. He was unharmed, uncoerced, and not alone.

He had given up the rocket launcher to the BOW on his left and the BOW on his right shot out a tentacle to retrieve the speargun. Next to them, Basia was smiling.

Her mutation was not complete. She was smaller than Ania had been in the end and some of her human teeth were refusing to fall out and make way for her new set of dagger-sharp teeth. The eight new appendages that writhed behind her were juvenile in size compared to the sets her pets had.

“Chris Redfield,” she hissed. “You killed my daughter. Are you prepared for me to kill your lover?”

Leon’s eyes narrowed. _‘We’re not lovers,’_ was on the tip of his tongue, but Chris had already risen to his feet, a solid wall between him and the enemy, and was speaking.

“Cut him free and you can do whatever you want with me.”

“Chris, no! I’m not worth it!”

“Yes,” Chris replied easily, without hesitation. “You are.”

“I was hoping you would feel this way,” Basia said. To her monsters, she hissed, “Hold him down.”

The room exploded into action. Chris had the I-virus, which meant he wasn’t helpless against the BOWs. There were two of them, though, and they still had their tentacles. Chris had creativity on his side, being able to think for himself, but there wasn’t the space for surprising maneuvers when the two BOWs trying to grab him each had eight extra limbs to grab him with.

At one moment, Chris’s left arm and leg were effectively pinned by one BOW while another sank its teeth into his shoulder, trying to force him to the ground. Tentacles roved over the captain, seeking to break bones and subdue. With a _roar_ of fury that was more human than monster, Chris turned his head and sank his own teeth into the BOW’s jaw, his free hand coming up to push on the BOW’s forehead, and he managed the sickening task of snapping the BOW’s skull free of his mandible before the surviving BOW could separate them.

The BOW wrapped all twelve of his limbs around Chris – legs included – but pure determination kept the man from staying down and taking it. He tore into the BOW’s restraining tentacles with his teeth again. He freed one arm before Yemen walked up to him, pressed the business end of the speargun against his clavicle, and hit the trigger. The spear went straight through Chris’s flesh and bone and into the ground, ripping a scream of pain from him.

“No!” Leon yelled, helpless to do anything but watch.

“Filip has always been good to my family,” Basia told the two struggling men. By how she rested a hand on Yemen’s shoulder, Leon had to guess that that was the guy’s first name. “When he was just a boy, he went and got my Ania back for me. He has been a dear friend of my family ever since. When the BSAA sent him to tell me that Ania had died, we grieved together. I already knew, I had seen it through the surveillance system in the facility. It was a shock to Filip, however. We thought putting him in the BSAA would be a good way to make sure you never found Ania but the plan was not perfect. I see that now.”

“I am sorry,” Filip choked, voice tight with tears. He wasn’t apologizing to Chris, though. He was putting another shaft in the speargun, ready to fire again. The surviving BOW had taken Chris’s moment of weakness to pin him down completely. “I am sorry, Miss Kowalczyk.”

Basia petted his head. “It was not your fault, Filip.”

Chris twisted his head around so that it was his cheek grating against the ground, eyes searching for Basia. “I’ll beg,” he said. “I’ll do anything you want.”

“Don’t do this,” Leon told him. “Not for me.”

“For you?” Chris said. “Anything.”

Leon swallowed thickly. “What?”

Chris fought to meet Leon’s gaze. “Leon!” His dark eyes were glassy with panic – not over his own fate, but Leon’s.

“Yes,” Basia crooned. “Keep looking at him. Keep looking at the man you love.” She came to stand behind Leon’s chair. One of her juvenile tentacles wrapped around his throat as a hand pushed down on the barbed wire over his chest. The pain was sharp and burning, but he had no air to yell with. In seconds, his vision was dancing with dark spots. He could hear Chris _screaming_ , like it was him in the chair, skin tearing and death approaching. His eyes rolled into the back of his head, body going numb…

Over the pounding of his own heart, he heard Chris scream again. He sounded like he was in so much pain…

The next thing he was aware of was air, rushing suddenly into his lungs. He gasped and struggled instinctively, and then cursed out as the barbs dug furrows into his flesh.

“Filip…” came Basia’s heartbroken voice behind him. She was no longer touching him and both Yemen and the other BOW had been torn to bits across the floor.

Chris was on his feet again, breathing hard. Agitated tentacles were writhing over his shoulders and hips, covered in some sort of viscous fluid.

It took a moment to gather enough oxygen to form a single thought. When he did, it was _‘Those are Chris’s.’_

They had sprung out of his back fully formed, tearing through his shirt and vest. Saliva oozed from the corner of his mouth, tinted red from blood, and the eyes that were locked on Basia standing just behind Leon were savage.

“He dies,” Basia hissed. “ _Now_.” Her hands curled around Leon’s head and he knew she was either about to crush his skull or break his neck. She’d been playing before, but she was moving fast now –

There was a _thwip_ and then Basia stumbled away from him.

Standing in the entrance was Claire Redfield and Rebecca Chambers.

And Claire had another speargun. Even as he stared owlishly at her, she loaded another shaft that held a capsule of fluid just below the tip. “Fire!” Rebecca yelled. Claire shot at Basia again.

Basia snarled, knocking it out of the air with a tentacle, but the first shot had already done something to her. Leon couldn’t see her from where he was trapped, but he could hear her unsteady movements. Her claws grabbed him by the hair, pulling his head back, and it was so obvious that she had no plans of dying without taking him with her. 

Chris had different plans. He _screamed_ something inhuman and sharp that dug into Leon’s eardrums and surged forward with tentacles shooting past him.

She screeched in pain and her severed arm fell into Leon’s lap, making him jerk as they pushed on barbs. Chris dragged her out from behind Leon, hands on her throat, and brought her face to his mouth. Her other arm was torn off in the struggle and his tentacles were tangled with hers.

“Chris, no!” Claire yelled. “Not like this! You’re acting like…”

He struck suddenly, clenching down on her scalp with his jaws. Her skull cracked and then split, brain matter oozing down. She went limp against Chris, body given over to cadaveric spasms in death.

“Not like this,” Claire whispered again, fear in her eyes. Chris looked up from his kill and met her gaze.

The dark eyes that stared down at her were wild, inhuman. Chris was breathing hard, every exhale ending on a hiss through dagger-sharp teeth. Bloody spittle hung onto his lips.

“Chris, look,” Rebecca said in her softest voice, which was incredibly soft. “Look, Chris.” She didn’t touch him, but she stood near him and his kill as she pointed at Leon. The man followed the direction of her arm and stared at Leon for a moment that dragged on forever. “See that?” Rebecca continued. “You did it. You protected your mate.” The look she sent Leon said that he better go along with what she was saying or else they might have a problem. Behind them, Claire was carefully loading another shaft.

Leon thought back to Chris holding a pillow like a newborn, how instinct had made him start to prepare for a child. Leon had been the only one not allowed to see Chris while he fought those alien instincts.

It didn’t take a genius to realize that Chris’s BOW brain was driving right now, and it said that Leon was going to be the other father of his offspring. Chris had to protect his mate and get rid of anything or anyone that might endanger him.

He licked his lips, trying to swallow past his sore throat. He spoke low and intimate, like it was just them in the room and he wasn’t tied to a metal chair with barbed wire.

“You did good,” he said, voice rasping from abuse. “I’m proud of you.” He was getting very tired of being put in this emotionally vulnerable position. “You took such good care of me, they can never touch me again.” Fuck this shit, this sucked. “I… have such a…” He squinted at Rebecca, reading her lips. “a strong mate.”

Chris dropped Basia’s body, the hiss leaving his breathing now as he calmed down. Each deep breath was almost soothing to Leon. The problem with soothing his nerves was that his body decided to remind him that he was actually in a purgatory-level of agony. There were dozens of points across his body that were stuck on the barbed wire, dozens of little scars he would carry with him for the rest of his life. Even in the places where they were not stuck in his flesh, they had scratched the skin raw. He felt that he had been skinned alive across his wrists and calves.

Thank God he kept up with his tetanus shots.

He looked away from Rebecca, going solo. “My big strong man,” he continued in that same raspy, proud voice. He was definitely going to hold this against Chris later, how the Tyrant-sized man immediately bowed over at his praise and curled around him without touching, limbs and tentacles stretched out as if Chris meant to protect him from the world.

“I need you to look at me,” Leon said, gazing up into that reluctantly adored face. “Look at me, baby.” He wasn’t a fan of pet names, but Chris’s dazed eyes jumped to his instantly and sparked with interest. He’d been right in his assumption that Chris was a sucker for them. “I’m still alive because of you. Because you didn’t give up and you fought the odds and you won. I respect you so much. But you need to step down and let Claire and Rebecca help now. You can’t get me out of this chair, but they can.”

As he spoke in that even, soft voice, Chris became more and more aware. Finally, Chris shook his head, as if dizzy.

“Leon…”

“Hey, you big lug. You saved my life.”

“… I did, didn’t I? Did I… Did I just tear people apart with my teeth?”

“How badly do you want the answer to that?”

“Not at all, really. When did Claire and Rebecca get here?”

“I don’t know, but I’d like to get out of this chair before we all start storytelling. I might do something embarrassing like start crying if I don’t get medical attention soon.”

Chris trailed his eyes over Leon’s abused body and winced. “I think you’re expected to cry at this point. I won’t hold it against you.”

“I am begging you,” he practically sobbed. “Do not hold _anything_ against me right now.”

“Luckily, I always keep a pair of pliers in my kit,” Rebecca chirped, waving them through the air. “And some pain killers. Getting you out of that chair is… going to be rough.”

In other words, Leon was about to be in more agony than he already was.

“Just… get it over with.” Rebecca injected the pain killer first while stroking his hair comfortingly.

Claire laid a hand on her brother’s arm. “Are _you_ okay?” she asked.

Chris watched Rebecca carefully and slowly free Leon from the wire while Leon whimpered and cursed.

“No,” he answered. He rested a hand over his heart, rubbing at an ache they couldn’t see. “Not really.”

~::~

Claire saw the news of the Chief of Office being abducted. Some time later, Chris called her and told her that he was following a tip on the location of some I-virus variant Tyrants in Pevek.

Not long after, Rebecca called to say she had found something interesting. Yemen had really “grinded her gears” those months ago when he came in and nabbed Chris from her own lab. She had vented to a Polish colleague about Yemen’s attitude some weeks ago, to which the colleague had warned her that Filip Yemen wasn’t just the grunt he appeared to be. They told Rebecca that Yemen was an honorary member of the Kowalczyk family.

Her colleague didn’t have the mission report Rebecca did, so he was understandably confused when she began squeezing him for all the information he had about Yemen and the Kowalcyzks. He didn’t know much beyond that, but it was a start. This had begun a mad search on Rebecca’s part to see if it was the same Kowalkcyzk family that Ania had been a part of. It had taken time, but she had eventually unearthed a news article about a young Filip Yemen returning Ania Kowalkcyzk to her family after the young heiress had been missing for six years.

Rebecca also discovered that Yemen was the agent who had volunteered to tell Basia of Ania’s death. He had admitted to no relation, from what Rebecca had gathered. Both women found this suspicious. Filip had known of Ania’s connection with Umbrella as soon as the BSAA did. Rebecca sent off a quick text to a friend in the BSAA and reported back to Claire that Filip had been offered a spot on the initial team to infiltrate the underwater base and had declined the position.

Claire openly speculated that Filip had to have told Basia about this and decided to call Basia to follow up on the matter. A call to her property was answered by a maid who told her in accented English that, “Ms. Kowalkcyzk is on business in Pevek and will return in a few days.”

Claire thanked her politely and immediately called Rebecca back.

“Chris is walking into a trap.”

Rebecca replied, “I’ll grab the tranquilizers, you get the tickets?” Claire hung up and got the exact address through TerraSave.

The tranquilizers had been specifically created in the event that Chris, for whatever reason, did lose control of himself. Rebecca was positive that any momentary lapse of judgement wouldn’t be permanent and had forced the BSAA to reconsider their standing orders. She created the tranquilizers as a medium between their needs and wants. The tranquilizer had to be put in a spear that was sharp enough and powerful enough to penetrate Chris’s skin with a dose measured to knock him out in as little time as possible. It was reluctantly accepted as a preferred alternative to taking him out with a rocket launcher if the need arose. Rebecca had even had the pleasure of testing it out on Chris to make sure it worked. It did, and well at that.

She grabbed the tranquilizers because Claire had told her that Chris was likely going to be facing off with other I-virus variant Tyrants. The tranquilizer had worked faster on Basia than it had on Chris.

This had left Basia near defenseless for Chris to crush her skull in his mouth. That had been three days ago.

Under investigation, Basia’s properties and electronic devices were seized. She had a backup of all the research that had happened in Tatra National Park and video files from the facility. A recently viewed file had been a replay of her daughter’s death under Chris’s hand. 

The screen photo on her personal laptop was of her holding a newborn Ania.

Leon got the rundown from his hospital bed. Again. This family wasn’t good for his health. “Are there any more family members we should worry about?” he asked Rebecca.

“I checked,” she said. “Ania was the last of the bloodline and Filip didn’t have a family of his own.”

“Oh, good. That’s a relief.”

Claire reached out and took Rebecca’s hand in her own. “You’re incredible, honey.”

“ _You’re_ incredible, sweetie.”

Claire smiled and pressed a kiss to Rebecca’s lips.

Leon squinted at them. “Are you fucking with me right now?”

“Oh, hey!” Claire snapped her fingers. “I knew there was someone I was forgetting.”

“Ouch, Claire,” Leon said, voice dry as the desert. “I have feelings.”

“Sorry, Leon,” Rebecca said. She smiled and pushed a strand of Claire’s bangs behind her ear. “With Chris in my lab and Claire visiting as much as she did, we started to get to know each other and…”

Claire smiled wickedly while Rebecca blushed.

“Oh, God, Claire, what did you do to her?”

“Nothing she didn’t like ~” Claire sang.

“Stop it!” Rebecca hissed, though she was trying not to smile.

“Isn’t your lab supposed to be a sterile environment?” Leon wondered.

“Hush, you.”

“I was _joking_. You’ve really… there?”

Rebecca hid her face in her hands. Claire nodded her head and mouthed ‘ _Everywhere’_. She winked at Leon.

Leon raised a brow at her. “Rebecca,” he addressed the flustered woman. “You deserve better.”

“Hey!” Claire cried. She went to hit his shoulder, remembered that he was in the hospital for a reason, and ended up swatting at the air around him instead.

The burst of air made his thin sheet ripple, which made the stitches underneath prickle.

“Ouch,” he groused.

“Sorry.”

“I guess I’m just surprised… I’ve only ever seen you date men before.”

“We don’t hang out as much as we should, Leon. Sherry has known that I’m bi for years.”

“I have to know… Did Jake know before me?”

Claire nodded solemnly. “You are literally the last person to find out.”

“Glad to know I mean so much to you.”

“You do,” she said. “You mean so much to me.” The moment was too serious, too fragile. She studied his face closely, as if committing him to memory. “I’m glad you’re going to be okay,” she whispered into the quiet room.

“I’m a cockroach,” he whispered back. “Nothing can kill me.”

Rebecca giggled helplessly.

“Anything that tries has to get through Chris first,” Claire said.

Now the room just felt awkward.

When Leon had finally been allowed to have visitors, he had expected Chris to be the first one through the door. Turned out, Chris had gone back to the BSAA HQ. Leon told himself that he was just going to make a report and then he’d be back.

It had been days and the man hadn’t even sent a text. Leon figured that Chris had made himself too vulnerable in Pevek and was trying to hide from what he had said and done. Leon couldn’t blame him but he wasn’t happy about it. He had been… looking forward to maybe talking about their emotions like full-grown, healthy adults. The kind of adults neither of them were, but they should try to be. Leon had obviously been alone in that thought process.

“He’ll come around,” Claire comforted him.

“Sure,” Leon agreed just to avoid talking about it. “How’s he dealing with the tentacles being back?”

“I think he’s planning on keeping them this time,” Rebecca replied. “Since they’re so useful.”

“Good for him.”

He got to enjoy their company and outrageous flirting for another hour before they departed. He laid alone in his hospital room, hoping to hear heavy footsteps coming to his room even though he knew he wouldn’t.

He was nothing but scar tissue at this point. Chris could do better, even if Chris thought he couldn’t. He shouldn’t have to settle for Leon.


	5. Discovery - Vulnerability

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the porn I said was going to be in this story. Leon uses the terms cunt and dick for his genitalia. There is oral sex where Chris goes down on Leon and Chris bottoms (I don't care that he's eight feet tall and has the strength to crush a minivan, he's gonna get fucked and he's going to love it). Front hole sex will occur as well as double penetration of both front hole and asshole in a FUTURE chapter.
> 
> In this chapter, there are feelings and healthy adult conversations. Leon and Chris make themselves terrifyingly vulnerable to one another. GET READY FOR CONSENTACLES. BET THAT TAG REALLY CONFUSED YOU IN THE SUMMARY UNTIL YOU GOT TO CHAPTER 2.

Upon being released from the hospital and put on paid medical leave by a guilt-ridden president, Leon was mildly confounded by the massive – barely street legal – Humvee waiting outside the entrance. The passenger side tinted window rolled down halfway, revealing a familiar gray face.

“Want a ride?” Chris asked. Even in the Humvee, he looked tightly packed into the driver’s seat.

“To where?” Leon asked, already getting in.

 _‘Nice to know I’m finally worth your time,’_ he thought bitterly. Even as the sentiment went through his head, he felt himself relax into the other man’s company. Leon couldn’t help but be relieved that Chris had come to see him. _‘Better late than never.’_

Chris shrugged. “Anywhere you want to go. Preferably where there are few people.” His seat was reclined ridiculously far back, his upper body supported by his mass of tentacles. His shoulders were hunched so that his head didn’t go through the roof.

Leon smiled at the image he made.

“How about my place?”

“I haven’t been there. Mind giving directions?”

“Sure.”

“Ready to give your neighbors a heart attack?” Chris asked.

“Marcy’s going to be jealous as fuck, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Leon let his eyes drag down. “If I don’t get in my apartment fast enough, she comes out and tells me about her Big Dick adventures.”

A humiliated groan rumbled out of Chris.

Leon smirked. “That is exactly what she calls them. I am not even making this up.”

“Oh, God.”

“One time, she pretended that she got our apartments confused when she knew I was home. It was 2 in the morning and I was on high alert because it sounded like someone was trying to break in. I see her through my keyhole with a guy twice her size. I answered the door to make her go away and she spent, fuck, I think she spent ten minutes just standing there and telling me about this guy’s Big Dick. She only left because he got bored and threatened to jump ship if they didn’t go.” He held his hands up, palms facing each other a terrifying distance apart given the subject they were discussing and mimicked her high-pitched breathy voice: “ _Big Dick adventure, Leon sweetie._ ”

Chris burst out laughing, throwing his head back. He hit the roof hard enough to dent the Humvee and only avoided swerving into the next lane by his years of experience.

“Never, _ever_ ,” Chris threatened – but he was definitely begging – “do that again, holy shit.”

“I hope you’re prepared to make an impression. I am definitely using you to one up her.”

“Is that all I am to you?” Chris murmured, amused. “Just a tool in winning your dick measuring contest with your neighbor?”

“Not just any dick measuring contest. A _Big Dick adventure_ measuring contest.”

Chris cleared his throat. Shifted nervously in his seat as much as someone with his bulk could. The man needed a Humvee the size of a small bus if he wanted to be totally comfortable in a vehicle.

“That, uh, insinuates that… there’s going to be a Big Dick adventure.”

Leon looked out his window. “Isn’t there?” he asked. His heart picked up speed. _Wasn’t that what was going to happen?_ “Wasn’t that what you were getting at in Pevek?”

Chris carefully squeezed the steering wheel. “I want a lot more from you than a single Big Dick adventure and… I can’t really give that to you anyway.”

Leon’s eyes jumped to Chris’s lap. He had never seen Chris’s genitalia before or after his mutation. He’d heard the rumors that Chris had been packing some serious heat, but what if it had fallen off after the I-virus? What if it had shriveled up?

“Is sex off the table altogether or do we just have to get creative?” he asked. “Because I’m willing to share my equipment with you.”

“Your… equipment.” Chris’s voice was tight. His hands clenched the steering wheel a little tighter. “That you use on yourself…?”

“Myself and my partner, when I have one.”

Now Chris glanced at _Leon’s_ lap.

“What’s _your_ stance on sex?” he asked, voice low and deep.

Leon lifted one leg, planting the heel of his boot on the dashboard, and let the other leg extend under it. His sweatpants tightened at the V of his legs, tugging at his stitches with prickling pain. His newest scars burned as his skin stretched.

Chris’s eyes were definitely dark and interested, swiveling between the road and Leon, but that brief moment of discomfort reminded Leon of something gravely important:

His body was a fucking disaster. He’d seen himself as he had gotten dressed and he looked like Frankenstein’s Monster. He had avoided barbed wire on his dorsal side – the back of his torso, legs, and arms – by virtue of the chair he had been restrained to. The underwear they had kept on him had been torn to shreds in escaping but had at least saved him from needing stitches across his lap. Chris had been kind enough to give Leon his bloody and torn flak jacket to wear until the retrieval team arrived.

There were still scratches though. Leon had a sudden vision of lube getting in his wounds and flinched.

Chris noticed. “Leon? You okay?”

He dropped his leg back down, wanting to curl his knees to his chest and hug himself. “Just remembered that I’m not in any shape to think about sex,” he admitted. He wanted Chris to think he was talking about the pain. He was thinking of how the lust would drain out of Chris’s face when he saw what was under Leon’s clothes.

 _‘You’re overreacting,’_ he told himself sternly. _‘Chris isn’t the kind of guy to care about scars.’_

Leon had so many of them now, though… He didn’t even want to look at himself, how could he expect someone else to?

“Shit, yeah. I just picked you up from the hospital. You should take it easy for now, Leon.” _For now_.

As if there was a later where they might revisit this topic.

Leon decided to bite the bullet. He sighed. “My body’s bad, Chris.”

Chris made a sharp left turn into a parking lot and then swung them into a spot in a maneuver so sudden that Leon’s insides swooped in the opposite direction of momentum. Chris stomped on the brakes and jerked the gearshift into parking with slightly too much strength.

Chris turned his body as much as he could to stare down at Leon like he was a fucking idiot that he had the displeasure of knowing. “ _Your_ body is bad?”

Leon had a sudden realization that that might not have been the best way to word his concerns to a guy who was infected with the I-virus.

“Don’t you do this,” Leon hissed. “Don’t make this about you. At no fucking point did I ever look at you and not want you. If you were still covered in fish scales and gave me half a chance, I would have taken it because you’re _you_ and I want you anyway I can get you, okay? But my expectations for you are different from my expectations for me.”

“Yeah, you’ve always held yourself to impossible standards. I don’t understand – you’re so fucking handsome and you’re telling me that you don’t like your body? Is it because of.. of…” Chris was obviously struggling to come up with the appropriate term.

“No, it’s not that,” Leon answered. “My cunt is actually the least of my problems.”

“Can you explain it to me?” Chris asked. “I am an eight-foot tall monster with tentacles coming out of my back and a shark mouth. You _saw_ me crush someone’s skull in my _jaws_. Somehow, you’re sitting there, saying it’s not me, it’s you, and you sound like you believe that.”

“Fuck, Chris.” Leon crossed his arms over his chest. “Just… take me home.”

“Leon,” Chris warned. Then, softer. “Please. I want to understand.”

Leon looked at him. He had those dark brown eyes that were so earnest, and his hair had grown back well. His skin was gray and his thin lips almost blue but there was not a scale in sight. He looked like Chris before the infection, just… bigger and improved. The tentacles were unique and had proven to only have Leon’s safety in mind and destruction for all who would hurt the people Chris loved.

“You’re gorgeous to me,” Leon told him honestly. “I wanted to climb you like a tree the first time I met you, but I didn’t think it’d be appropriate. I figured out that I liked you years later, even when you were being a jackass. I almost convinced myself that you weren’t worth it in China, and I almost hated you for dragging me into your mess with Arias, but I always thought you were the most attractive man I have ever met.”

“I don’t look like I used to, Leon.”

“You’re just… more,” Leon told him. “More muscle, more mouth, more purpose. More limbs.”

“This isn’t about me. This is about you.”

“I… have a lot of scars. I know I’m desirable when I wear clothes. I know people want me. But when the clothes come off? I’ve survived a lot, but I’ve never walked away from my missions unscathed.”

“You think that _I_ won’t want _you_ because you have… scars? Am I hearing this right?”

“You don’t have to be such a fucking prick about it, Redfield. I’m being honest with you, could you give me a little respect for once?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry… You’re right. This means a lot to you and I should treat it seriously.”

Leon paused. “Are we having an actual healthy discussion about our emotions and boundaries?”

“Had to happen at some point, didn’t it?”

“Wow. Go us.”

“Let me try this again,” Chris said. He gathered his thoughts. “You know how you think that I’m hot stuff?”

“Yes.” Not even a question.

“Leon, I’ve been using you as spank bank material for over a decade. Give yourself some credit.”

His body betrayed him. His eyes widened and he felt his cheeks heat up. “Well,” his voice cracked. He tried again. “Well, you haven’t seen me naked.”

“That’s what my imagination is for.” Then, more serious again, “I can tell you for a fact that I want to see you naked like someone stranded in the desert wants water. Whatever is under those clothes, I want it. I want _you_ , Leon.”

“I repeat, you haven’t seen –”

“You haven’t seen me naked either. You seem ready to give me a chance, though.”

“Of course.”

“Do you think I’m shallow, Leon?”

“I know I am. I’m only in this for those muscles.”

Chris stared at him blankly. He glanced at one bulging bicep and then back at Leon. Experimentally, he flexed.

Leon’s eyes zeroed in on the motion.

“Alright,” Chris drawled. “Nice to know I’m only eye candy to you.” But he was smiling almost shyly. Leon knew that he faced a lot more people afraid of his muscle mass these days then turned on by it versus before he got infected.

“Mm,” Leon agreed. “I’m certainly not here for your brain.”

“Hey,” Chris admonished without heat. He switched back to what the problem was. “If you like the shape of my body so much, why can’t I like the shape of yours?” Inspiration struck and he set his jaw. “I have a plan.”

“No.”

“Hear me out.”

“Does it include exploding something?”

Chris side-eyed his own lap critically. “Depends on what’s exploding.”

Leon groaned. “That was awful.”

Chris reached out, his massive hand gently cupping the back of Leon’s head. He was being careful to not aggravate his stitches. He leaned in, intimately close. “I think I’m ugly as sin,” Chris admitted. “And you think I’ll turn tail –”

“Tentacle –”

“Fuck you – I’ll turn tentacle and run the moment I see you naked. Let’s go back to your place, make Marcy jealous about your Big Dick adventure, and then just… lay all our cards down. Strip everything off and show each other what we’re most afraid of.”

“That sounds like your worst plan yet.”

“In the way of body count, it’s probably my best.” He searched Leon’s eyes. “If you don’t want to, I won’t push.”

“You’re not going to challenge me to defend my honor? That’s unlike you.”

“Not going to lie, I thought about it for a moment. I know you’d do it out of spite, to prove it to the both of us that you can… but I don’t want to coerce you to do something like this.”

A thick, flexible appendance snaked into Leon’s hair, another coming to rest over his hand. A third squeezed between him and his seat, undulating between his scapulae.

Leon swallowed thickly. “I actually like these little guys.”

“They’re not sentient, Leon, they just react to subconscious cues.”

“You saying you subconsciously want to hold me?”

“I very consciously want to hold you, but I don’t want to hurt you anymore than you already are.”

Leon released a breath of aching need. “If you don’t like what you see, I reserve the right to shoot you with one of Rebecca’s tranquilizers and throw you in the ocean.”

“Which one?”

“Whichever ocean you like the least.”

“Damn, that’s cold.” Chris gently bumped his forehead against Leon’s. “I’m scared too.”

“You shouldn’t be,” he told the other man. He moved slow enough for Chris to say no if he didn’t want this, hand reaching for the other man’s chest. His spandex shirt was so tight that it might as well have been painted on. A shirt this big, he had to have them custom-made; had he wanted the shirt this small or had it been a tailoring mistake?

Leon wasn’t complaining either way. He caressed his palm across Chris’s pecs, the man radiating heat like a furnace. Chris shuddered under his touch, breath catching before he exhaled in a blast of air. From his pecs, Leon dragged his hand down, over heaving ribs, stacked abs, and to the small pooch of fat that sat above Chris’s belt. He wanted to bite it, to lave attention on this single soft spot on Chris’s body. Some parts of him were sill adorably human. Chris stopped breathing altogether as Leon circled back, smoothing his fingers into the dip of his clavicle. A tentacle appeared and wove beseechingly between his fingers, asking for mercy as Chris shivered under his touch.

“That’s not fair,” Chris whispered roughly. “I want to touch too.”

“Sure,” Leon teased. “You find a spot that isn’t covered in stitches and go right on ahead.” Except he had forgotten that there were places on his body that were stitch-free.

Chris turned his hand to cup the side of Leon’s face. His thumb feathered over Leon’s hairline, wielding the strength to break him and using it instead to explore. He traced the line of Leon’s nose, touched the skin right underneath, and then rubbed at Leon’s bottom lip.

Now Leon was breathing fast and hard. He turned his hand over and gripped a tentacle for support. His other hand curled over Chris’s shoulder.

“Can I… try something?”

“The thing you’re about to try better be kissing me.”

“It is. Not sure how successful I’m going to be.”

“Here, then,” Leon said. “Let me lead.” There was no way he was putting his tongue in Chris’s mouth – it’d take a miracle for him not to lose it to that mouth of sharp, triangular teeth – but Chris still had some semblance of lips that Leon pressed his own too, chaste and dry. The earth didn’t move, but something in him settled at the touch, became warm. _‘Fucking finally,’_ he thought. _‘I’ve wanted this for a long time now.’_

Maybe he couldn’t stick his tongue in Chris’s mouth, but Chris became daring and licked at Leon’s lips for entrance. The smaller man let him in without a fight and was startled by the length of muscle that was suddenly in his mouth.

The noise that left him was high-pitched, surprised, and horny as hell. He had a vision of that tongue in his other holes and that was about the moment his cunt started to throb and his ass clenched.

Chris pulled back, pupils swallowing up his irises and making his eyes look completely black. “I can smell that,” he groaned. “Fuck, I can _taste_ you.”

“Stop breathing then for all I care,” he snapped, embarrassed. He slammed his legs together.

“Fuck that. I want to wear it like cologne. Please, baby, spread’em.”

“Don’t call me baby.” Nonetheless, he let his legs relax apart again.

“You have a preference?”

“I chose my own name, so, yeah, I’m actually really happy with being called Leon.”

Chris _pouted_ at him.

Leon had already known that Chris would be a sucker for pet names. He gave in. “You keep trying out names and I’ll let you know which ones I don’t hate.”

“I feel like that’s going to be a short list.”

“I have high standards.”

“And, for some reason, you’re letting _me_ touch you.”

“I will kick your ass, Redfield.”

“So you’re allowed to talk bad about yourself, but I’m not allowed to do the same?”

Leon held the jut of Chris’s jaw in his hand. “I’ll try to be nicer to myself if you are.”

“Oh, I want to be _very nice_ to you.”

“Pervert, you know that’s not what I meant.”

Chris sighed and pressed their lips together again, holding back on his tongue this time. Leon was only slightly disappointed.

“Your place?” Chris repeated. “Clothes off? You can back out if you don’t want what you see.”

“You seem so sure that _I’ll_ be the one to end this.”

“I know what I want.”

“I know what _I_ want. I just also know what I look like.”

“No shit, I know what I look like too. Wanna see who looks worse with their clothes off?”

“Go right on ahead, Redfield.” He pulled his hands back and let Chris get seated again. His extra appendages stretched across the space between them and kept touching Leon the rest of the ride.

They were pulling into his complex’s underground garage when Leon had a thought. “I’m going to win this Big Dick adventure,” he told Chris. “You’ve got at least eight of them.”

Chris groaned despairingly. “Those aren’t dicks, Leon!”

Straight-faced, Leon brought a tentacle to his face and slurped it down his throat.

The sound Chris made was straight from a porno. Just as quickly as the tentacle went it, it pulled back and then thrust right back in. Chris grabbed it with both hands and pulled it to his own chest like a scandalized lady clutching her pearls. “Leon!”

Leon licked his lips. “Yes?” he rasped.

“Your apartment, right now!”

“Yes, sir,” Leon rumbled. He nonchalantly exited the building, licking his lips.

The tentacle had kind of been salty. He liked it.

Chris came out a moment later, hunched over and cautious.

Leon had civilian neighbors and Chris didn’t go out much these days. Leon endeavored to get them in his apartment as fast as possible.

“Follow me.”

“Right.”

They set off at a fast walk, taking the stairs to the fifth floor. Leon scoped out the balcony walkway and spotted no one on his level. He motioned for Chris to follow and stole his way to his front door, Chris walking as quietly as he physically could behind him.

Just as Leon went to put his key in the lock, Marcy’s door opened.

“Hey, L-”

Perhaps a normal person would have reacted to an eight-foot tall gray man with absolute terror and screaming. Chris had tucked his tentacles into a tight bundle behind his back the moment Marcy’s door made a sound, so at least Marcy couldn’t see those.

Marcy was visibly startled at first glance. There was a hint of fear as her mouth opened, like she was about to start yelling – but then Marcy realized she was looking at exactly what she liked to look at.

Her eyes trailed down Chris’s body with an almost physical touch. She suddenly relaxed her entire body so that she was spread attractively against her doorframe.

Leon knew precisely what she was thinking. She proved him right a moment later when she leered at him and said, “Big Dick adventure, Leon sweetie?”

Leon wasn’t sure. First, they were going to make themselves vulnerable as fuck to each other. After that, if Chris could still find Leon attractive with all of his scars, Leon was going to try and talk the man into sleeping over, maybe hint toward some heavy petting at most since Leon was actually in pain and didn’t want to go all the way right then. If all of that happened the way he wanted it to, then he was likely to try out some tentacle sex at some point in the future. That would definitely count as a Big Dick adventure.

To keep the conversation short, he nodded. “ _Big_ Dick adventure,” he told her. He finally unlocked his door and nudged it open. If Chris walked out tonight, he knew Marcy would be willing to drink with him till morning and not judge him.

“Hey,” Chris choked behind him.

Marcy bit her bottom lip and stared at Chris’s lap. “You tell me how that goes, Leon sweetie?”

“Sure.”

“ _No_ ,” Chris ground out. “Have a good night, ma’am.” He pulled Leon with him into his apartment, gently clicking the door shut behind them. Through the barrier, they heard Marcy cheer, “Get some!”

“That was… possibly one of the more positive reactions I’ve had from a civilian,” Chris admitted. “Even one who looks like she’s… at least seventy? You made her sound a lot younger.”

Leon snorted. He took Chris’s hand in his and pulled him toward the living room. He thought about doing this in his bedroom, but then decided he’d need somewhere to hide and lick his wounds if Chris couldn’t handle this and wanted to leave. Leon flicked a switch on, casting soft light on the room.

The hand in his was trembling just the slightest bit.

“You’ve got nothing to be afraid of, Redfield. It’s just me.”

“That’s the point. It’s _you_.” He shrugged. “When I was… before the I-virus… I thought I had a chance with you. I knew I looked good and I’d seen you check me out a few times. I told myself I’d have the time and courage to ask you out someday and it would all work out from there. Life hasn’t worked out the way I thought it would.”

“It never does,” Leon agreed. “I like where we are right now, though.” Whatever happened in the next five or so minutes was up for debate.

Chris considered this. “Could be better.”

Chris did have some variant of the t-Virus, so… “I know.”

The other man’s eyes dropped to his mouth. “One more kiss?”

Leon leaned in. “Yeah…”

Chris lowered himself into a deep squat and Leon stepped between his knees to have one last kiss. The other man pulled him effortlessly closer with his tentacles, making Leon split his legs to sit on one massive thigh. His touch was gentle on his injured body, using the smallest force necessary to get Leon where he wanted him. With Leon being willing, it wasn’t much force at all.

“What did I do…” Chris murmured against his lips. “That just turned you on?”

“You’re so _big_ ,” Leon growled. “And you’re not even struggling right now.” Chris was still in the squat position, stance as perfect as if he was sitting in a chair while lifting Leon’s whole weight on his one leg. “Fuck, you’re strong…”

“I did not think that was a turn-on for you.”

“That’s because you could never smell me before. You’ve been in my fantasies, you’ve never actually seen them.”

“That’s hot.”

Leon swallowed thickly. “Now or never?”

Chris nodded solemnly.

This felt more like a death sentence than it should, but Leon was glad they were getting it out of the way. He didn’t want to get invested and then have Chris realize that he wasn’t interested in Leon’s garbage disposal of a body too late for Leon to save himself from the heartache.

This was still going to hurt no matter what, but at least he was only a little hopeful that Chris would stay.

He turned his back to Chris, could hear the man turn around as well and start to strip. Leon gingerly followed suit, stitches itchy and sore. “How do you get the shirt on and off?” he asked to distract himself from a rising sense of panic. The tentacles couldn’t make shirts easy.

Chris cleared his throat to speak, obviously facing the same nerves as Leon. “There are Velcro pieces on the sides that I undo, then I slip it over my head.”

Leon considered this. “I could literally rip your shirt off.”

The small laugh Chris gave him was almost hysterical. “If you wanted to.”

Leon very much did want to.

The underwear came off the easiest. He didn’t have any scars on his ass, so it was pretty much his only winning point, and the scratches over his lap were the only marks on his body that would heal without a mark.

There were even scars on his feet: Falling glass, getting rubble dropped on them, getting dragged by BOWs. He had broken at least four toes over his career.

He opened his mouth, about to tell Chris to forget it, this wasn’t going to work out. Leon was too vulnerable, naked inside and out, and he was thinking the best sex they would ever achieve was if Leon tore some holes in his sweatpants and covered up the rest of his body. When was the last time he had even worn a short-sleeve shirt, bared his arms to the sun? All of his shirts had long sleeves these days and he wore his jacket in all weather.

He barely heard Chris move over his own pounding heart.

He certainly heard the way Chris’s breath caught as he got his first good look at Leon outside of an emergency situation. Largely free of stitches, the other man had an unfettered look at every place Leon had been stabbed, burned, bitten, and shot in the back. Betrayals layered over war layered over duty.

“Why won’t you turn around?” Chris asked, voice small and strangled.

“My front looks worse,” he ground out. “I have so many stitches. Most of them are going to scar too.”

“I can see why you’re afraid,” Chris told him. “Going out there alone against monsters straight out of nightmares hasn’t been kind to you.” Leon tensed, hands squeezing into fists at his side. “But, fuck, Leon, how can you really think you’re anything but gorgeous?”

Leon reached his left hand across his body to touch the long stretch of glossy, burnt flesh on his right side, skin numb under his fingertips.

“Yeah, honey,” Chris breathed. “I see you. I’m not lying to make you feel better. Look at that. Look at everything you’ve been through. Fuck, you’re so strong… You’re so brave. Turn around, honey, let me see all of you.”

“Honey?” he choked.

“You don’t like it?”

“I… don’t mind it. Better than being called an infant.” He felt unsteady as he shuffled his feet around, turning toward Chris.

He wasn’t surprised by what he saw. Chris was a hulking mass of muscle, towering more than two feet over Leon’s head. His eight extra appendages were undulating like waves behind his back, unsure whether to rest or to touch.

“What were you scared of again?” Leon asked, eyes following stone-cut power encased in impenetrable skin from the boulders of his shoulders over his pecs and down to the V of his dangerously defined thighs where his dick hung.

He frowned first. _‘Huh, it’s small. Looks like a twisty lollipop,’_ he thought, curious. It was ribbed in a spiral direction from base to tip just like the novelty candy and had no visible glans. Would it taste sweet? He rested his hand lightly on Chris’s abs for a point of contact.

Leon’s eyes bugged out. _‘Shit, no, it’s not small.’_ Chris’s dick wasn’t proportionate with the rest of his body, which had caused Leon’s initial confusion. For a mere human, though? With Leon’s hand near it for comparison? A fucking masterpiece. Long and thick, worthy of the rumors Leon had heard of Chris before his infection. Leon wanted it and he had three holes aching to take it.

Chris exhaled harshly through his mouth, eyes dark.

_‘Right, he can smell that. Taste it.’_

“So far,” Chris ground out. “It looks like neither of us is running away screaming into the night.”

“I am definitely liking the image of screaming in the night,” Leon told him. “Damn, now I’m in the mood for some sausage.”

Chris barked a laugh, surprised. “I would, uh… I would not.”

“Not right now, yeah. Maybe later?”

Chris hesitated. “It wouldn’t be a good idea.”

Leon frowned up at him. If Chris didn’t want his dick touched, then Leon would respect that. He was kind of hoping Chris would explain why, though.

He scrutinized the penis. The heft of it would stretch him out good, and that spiral ribbing would make a hell of an experience.

“Leon…” Chris’s voice was desperate as Leon’s increasing arousal washed over him.

His penis _rippled_. The tip of it began to peel into two separate flat tips that filled out the further apart they came. As they plumped up, they became erect and longer. Thicker. They were only half-unraveled and Leon could already tell that each would be bigger than its singular flaccid state had been.

Since starting T, Leon didn’t get wet. He had to use lube when he was planning on doing penetrative sex.

In that moment, though, he almost felt it happen. Every neuron in his brain focused on a single purpose: _Get ready for that Big Dick adventure. Two holes at once._

Marcy would be proud as hell of him.

“ _Shit_ ,” Chris snarled, and his hand came down to wrap around his genitals to contain them. It was too late, though. The reproductive appendages had completely unraveled and were proudly standing at attention.

“Can you stop that?” Chris snarled.

“No, I really can’t,” he groaned. “I cannot stop myself from wanting you so much that I’m fucking _throbbing_.” He turned his face up toward the ceiling and focused on his breathing. “I’m sorry, give me a minute. Let me calm down.”

Yeah, he wanted to ride those dicks like they were a Kawasaki Ninja model motorcycle.

Chris _didn’t_ want that, though.

“Maybe you should put your briefs back on,” Leon suggested, still staring at the ceiling.

Chris actually chuckled. “You know, I thought you would ask me to put my clothes back on. I just thought it’d be for a very different reason. Kind of the opposite problem.”

“Well, you’re a dumbass and I told you I wouldn’t change my mind.”

“I haven’t changed mine either,” the other man said softly. He didn’t move to retrieve his briefs. “I thought the two-dick thing would be a problem.”

“Pretty sure most people fantasize about their partner having two dicks.”

“Not like this.”

“I can’t tell you how to feel about your body,” Leon told him. “I can’t tell you to enjoy it half as much as I am right now. I know that’s not how this works. I just need you to understand that I _really_ like what I see, and I really like what you’re working with there.”

Chris leaned into his line of sight, that tall bastard. He smiled sadly down at Leon. “Can you stand in front of a mirror, look yourself in the eye, and say that all again?”

“Fuck no.”

“Guess I have to say it to you instead.” Chris got down on his knees which was… pointless. What the hell. He still had an inch or two on Leon and he was on his _knees_. He sat back on his calves, legs folded under him, and Leon finally got the smug experience of being taller. If only by a little bit. “Can I touch you, honey?”

Leon looked down at himself, at the stitches and angry, red lines of wounds left behind by barbed wire. Scars on top of scars. His fingers twitched indecisively, his mind warring between letting himself have this and retreating to safer ground. With herculean effort, he whispered, “Yes.”

Chris’s hands were light on the back of his knees. They climbed up his body with utter patience, avoiding the entirety of his injured front. Fingers kneaded his muscular thighs, his firm and round ass. They massaged at his lower back and fingertips tapped at his spine and ribs as they walked up to his scapulae.

They slid back down his body and squeezed his ass again. He pushed and pulled his cheeks together and apart. His extra appendages slid down Chris’s arms and then around Leon, supporting his back.

Leon had an inkling of what was going to happen before it did. He was braced for it when Chris cupped his buttocks and lifted him off the floor, effectively seating Leon in the palms of his hands. His tentacles acted like the back of a chair and kept him from tilting backward.

Chris held him in that position effortlessly as he pulled Leon closer to his face, eyes always on Leon’s. His nose nudged between Leon’s knees. “Can I touch you down here?” he asked, voice deep and rough. His tongue dragged over a patch of uninjured flesh between healing red lacerations.

Leon let his full weight lean on the tentacles. “Yeah,” he said, body relaxing. “You can touch me there. Just… don’t get too adventurous.” Leon liked the burn of getting pushed a little too far, but pain turned him off. He didn’t want sweat, spit, or any other bodily fluid getting in his injuries and irritating them. If he wanted pain, he’d go back to work.

Chris wormed his way between Leon’s legs, nudging forward an inch or two before pressing kisses and tongue to uninjured inner thighs. The going was slow and sensuous, and Leon let loose a sigh of pleasure. “What’s the verdict on hair pulling?” He asked.

“Do it,” Chris demanded. “Just like leaving a positive review. A bald patch means four stars. Screaming my name is five.”

Leon huffed a laugh and ran his hands through Chris’s burr cut. His hair was too short to get a good grip on so Leon ended up massaging his scalp without thinking about it. His breathing stuttered when Chris finally reached the junction of his thighs. That long, flexible tongue teased its way inside, laving his dick and sucking oh-so fucking carefully. The muscle teased inside, hooking up and dragging against sensitive nerves…

It took minutes for Leon to climax, yelling at the ceiling and hands fisted in what he could grab of Chris’s hair. Chris groaned between his legs, lapping at his oversensitive cunt. “So good, honey,” Chris rumbled. His eyes were swallowed up by his black pupils. He was hissing with each harsh breath he let out, trembling in his own skin.

Leon was so relaxed, flying on so many good hormones, that he just spread his legs further. “Come on in, big guy,” he crooned.

“You have no fucking idea how much I want to.” Regretfully, though, Chris didn’t. “I can’t infect others, but I don’t trust that my dicks have your best interests in mind.”

Leon thought of Chris getting his bubble ready for a baby.

The I-virus would always be a part of Chris to some degree, and that remnant wanted to spread his mutated genes. Leon was a guy who happened to have ovaries, a womb, and – at this point – undeniable chemistry with Chris. Leon was top pick for being bred.

The fantasy returned of making a baby with Chris. A good, healthy, chubby baby… An I-virus infected baby… A child he could hold and love… A child that could rip its way out of his belly with dagger teeth and talons. The two images could not coincide peacefully.

They couldn’t guarantee what would grow in his body, should all the baby-making factors align and allow Leon to conceive. Whatever baby they made together would have the I-virus to some extent, but none that they could confidently, and without risking Leon’s wellbeing, control.

Leon licked his lips. “I’ve got a box of dicks in my bedroom,” he told Chris. “Do you want to try them out?”

“I don’t know if you can get a finger inside of me without me breaking it.”

“I don’t know if you’ve been around recently, but I’ve been through worse and I’m willing to take that chance.”

Chris let him stand on his own two feet and sat up. He was close enough to kiss, so that was exactly what Leon did. He tasted himself on the other man’s tongue as Chris let the slick muscle into Leon’s mouth. His hands molested Leon’s ass, a tentacle curling around one cheek before squirming between his legs, blunt end slipping just slightly into Leon’s cunt.

Chris jerked back, the tentacles going with him. “Shit, sorry –”

“Shut up, let it do what it wants.” He grabbed Chris’s face and reeled him back in. The tentacle returned, going around the back of his thigh instead of over his abrasions, and began to push inside. Leon grunted, head falling to Chris’s shoulder, and widened his stance. A small cry left him as it curled and writhed inside of him, aiming deeper.

“Fuck, shit, I forgot, pull out.”

Chris did so immediately. “I’m sorry –”

Leon punched him in the shoulder. It hurt his hand more than it hurt Chris, but it made the other man shut up. “I forgot I needed lube. I got too adventurous. It’s not your fault.” Leon kissed him again. “Let’s take care of you, Captain Redfield.”

Chris got to his feet, pricks wet with a milky fluid that dribbled excessively from the tips.

That was going to ruin Leon’s sheets.

He decided it would be worth it.

“In the spirit of talking shit out like healthy adults,” Leon began, taking Chris’s hand in his and leading him down the short corridor to his room, “I wasn’t actually planning on going this far tonight… if it turned out you wanted to stay.”

“In the spirit of talking shit out like healthy adults,” Chris repeated with a content smile, “I wasn’t planning on you wanting this at all.”

“Goes to show how well you know me.”

“You thought I was going to leave.”

“I hoped you would stay,” Leon admitted. “I told myself not to, but I already had this whole night planned out in case you chose to stay.”

“How does it go? What’s your plan?”

“At most, I envisioned some heavy petting…”

“We may have surpassed that a little bit.”

“No kidding. I want you to stay the night. Sleep with me.”

Chris paused in his doorway. “That… wouldn’t be for the best. It’s nighttime, there aren’t as many people out and it’s easier to mistake what you see. In daylight, I’m a lot harder to miss. Also, I don’t sleep anymore so much as I just shut down for about three hours and then get back up again.”

Leon cradled Chris’s hips in his hands, rubbing at muscle and bone. “You heading back to the BSAA tonight, then?”

“I have a room set up at the American branch,” Chris told him.

“Do you have to clear visitors with them?”

Chris looked at him with awe. “Yeah. Should I… Should I call and tell them I’ll be having a visitor?”

“You do that,” Leon agreed. “I’ll get an overnight bag ready.” He turned his head, licking a nearby tentacle. It arched into his mouth. “In a little bit,” he amended. “Get that ready in a little bit.” He opened his mouth and let the appendage in, warm and soft and edging down his throat.

Good thing Leon didn’t have a gag reflex.

Chris whimpered. “Okay, in a little bit.” There was a sound of flesh on flesh. Leon looked down through his lashes and saw that Chris had gathered his two dicks in one wide hand and was jerking them off.

A tentacle pressed against Leon’s lips and he let it in without hesitation.

Chris whined. “D-dicks? You said you had dicks?”

“Mmmmmhm.” He separated reluctantly from Chris and his many fun appendages. His light switch was connected to a bedside lamp that glowed softly, enough light for him to read by without making his room too bright.

His sex aids were dutifully cleaned after every usage with a trusted brand of toy cleaner, charged, and stored in a box under the right side of his bed. There was no real reason for him to retrieve them by getting on hands and knees and crawling across the bed and then laying down with legs spread as far apart as comfortable with his abrasions to slide the box free, but that was exactly what he did. His lacerations pinched unpleasantly, but the sound of Chris’s hand speeding up on his dicks was worth it.

He heard Chris get closer. “If I get on your bed, there’s a good chance it will break.”

“Sounds like a good reason to get a new bed.” He opened the box, showcasing his equipment. The bed made alarming sounds as Chris put his hands down on either side of Leon, his knees denting the mattress between Leon’s.

“If we’re going to do this,” Chris said, “I want the vibrator. I want it on my prostate until I cry, you got that, Kennedy?”

“Yes, Captain,” Leon purred. He gingerly turned over in the cage of Chris’s limbs, the slim, black vibrator in hand. It wasn’t half as big as the dicks Leon liked to use with his past partners, but it was effective. In his other hand was K-Y jelly.

Chris shuddered. “I hope this works or else I’m going to be _pissed_.” His tentacles burrowed under and around Leon, lifting him as Chris stretched out on the bed and settled Leon between his legs. Chris folded one of Leon’s pillows beneath where his tentacles came out of his back and folded the other above where they protruded before using his arm as a pillow for his head against the wall. He was too tall for Leon’s bed and he let one leg fall off the side and bent the other one at the knee. Leon pressed his mouth to Chris’s abs, biting down and sucking, as he warmed the lube in his hands.

“What… am I looking at?” Chris asked suddenly, frowning at Leon’s wall.

Leon, who stared at that wall whenever he was in his bedroom long enough to, knew exactly what he meant. Against Chris’s skin, he murmured, “ _Starza_ …” He nibbled at skin that would not give to his touch. “When you try to act like a real knight, but you’re savage inside.” He thought about that sometimes. Thought of the parallels between the grief and conflict of the painting and their real lives.

“Savage inside,” Chris repeated. “You?”

Leon laved his attention over the space between Chris’s pecs, practically climbing on top of him to do so. “Us,” he corrected.

Chris relaxed beneath him, idly watching him with dark eyes as if hypnotized into a drunken state. Leon began to travel southward once more. Chris’s dicks were insistent and wet against Leon’s clavicle, but he didn’t have Chris’s consent to touch them and kept his hands away from them.

He used his fingertips to rub over and around Chris’s furled hole, free hand massaging the other man’s belly. He slipped his pinkie in first as a test.

Chris was, in fact, tight as fuck. Leon thrust in slowly, just the tip, pulled out, and then pushed back in further. He curled his finger and Chris gave an answering hum. “Glad to see you’re being careful,” he rumbled.

“I have plans,” Leon informed him. “Those plans do not involve going back to the hospital and explaining how I broke my fingers.”

The going was slow, but watching Chris go from relaxed and pleasant to wound up and gasping was so good on its own that Leon didn’t want to go any faster. He had switched to his pointer and middle fingers, thrusting them all the way inside, pressing on Chris’s prostrate, and then sinking back out to rub at his sphincter and perineum. The stitches across his arm, wrist, and the back of his hand burned from exertion and yet he felt no inclination to stop. When he added a third finger, there was a real moment of concern that Chris _would_ shatter them with the force of his ass clenching down on them. Chris relaxed at the last second, giving a needy groan.

Leon smirked against Chris’s bellybutton. “Are you ready?”

“Fuckin’ _do it_ ,” he slurred. His tentacles were curling into tight spirals and then slowly unwinding, some thumping heavily against the mattress. Obviously, Leon was doing something right.

He coated the vibrator in an exorbitant amount of lube and slid it inside Chris’s ass. He meant to go slowly, but the vibrator just slipped right in and Chris made such a hungry sound that Leon just… let it happen. Let it sink all the way inside in one go, half-prepared for it to shatter as Chris clamped down with a triumphant hiss. He pulled it all the way out to Chris’s chagrin, found that it was undamaged, and shoved it roughly back inside.

Chris loved it. His legs spread further apart. “That’s right, Kennedy, _fuck me_.”

“S-shit.” Leon thrust the dick with the full force of his upper body until his sweat made his lacerations sting. Belatedly, he remembered that it was a vibrator and turned it on to its lowest setting. The light buzz reached his ears a moment after Chris had already arched his entire body into the vibrator. His tentacles lashed out, tossing the bedside table and lamp both. The lamp hit the ground hard enough to shatter the lightbulb and the room descended into darkness.

Leon had the thought that he should flip the switch off so that he didn’t run the risk of a fire starting. That would require leaving Chris, though. He decided a minor fire would be worth it, worst case scenario.

Chris’s hand came between them, jerking hard and fast at his dicks. “More,” he demanded.

Leon turned the vibrator to pulsing, adjusting it inside of Chris until –

Chris _wailed_ , back bowing off the bed. The bed protested loudly in turn, and yet still held for the moment.

“I didn’t think you’d be this sensitive,” Leon managed to strangle out, his insides throbbing. He kept the vibrator there against Chris’s prostrate. He knew overstimulation was a thing, but Chris said he wanted to cry. He changed the setting to its medium constant vibration and held his position. Chris didn’t make it easy, writhing as he was, undulating and whimpering like an animal caught in a trap. He was definitely having a much better time than an injured animal, but he was squirming like he was trying to get away. Leon watched his face closely for a sign that Chris didn’t want this anymore. His brow was tight with tension, mouth gaping open and tongue lolling, his expression edging toward pain.

“How you feeling, baby?” Leon burred lowly, one hand steady on Chris’s hip. “You need me to slow down?”

“Don’t you fuckin’ dare!” His head thrashed from side to side. “I’m not crying yet, am I?”

“Not yet.” Leon turned the vibrator to its highest setting.

“ _LEON!_ ” Chris’s hand was a blur over his dicks, so fast and hard on himself that Leon winced. He was loving it, though, so who was Leon to judge that Chris liked a little pain with his sex?

Chris sobbed, just once, hips trying to angle away from the vibrations without conscious thought. There was a wet glimmer in his eyes, triangular teeth bared as he clenched his jaw and arched off the bed with such force that Leon had to grab onto his thigh to keep from falling off –

Two things happened at once: One, Chris exploded.

Not in a horrific, blood-and-guts sort of way that Leon had seen far too often. However, the eruption of fluid from his dicks was nothing short of a volcanic eruption of seed.

Two, Chris stomped with his one foot still on the bed. Leon’s bed promptly gave up on life and a loud splintering wail was emitted as his bed abruptly took the downward dog position.

And Chris’s climax just. Kept. Going.

The milky white fluid coated Chris’s abdomen with spurts of it reaching his chest, and the dribble of seed kept running like a steady stream even a full minute later. Leon turned off the vibrator and gently pulled it out. He laid it aside and massaged Chris’s inner thighs, watching him come down from his high.

He was thinking his next bed shouldn’t have legs. He was going to have to ask some embarrassing questions like, “Will this bed frame survive the full force of a Ram pickup?” with a straight face so that the salespeople knew he wasn’t joking.

Leon pressed a kiss to the side of Chris’s knee, insides still _throbbing_ , but he was so content with this moment that he just wanted to leave it be.

Also, his body hurt from pushing his stitched-together flesh too far.

Whatever pipe they broke to make his dicks go off like a faucet eventually mended itself, leaving behind a minor flood all over Chris and Leon’s bed. Leon noted that he had not been touched at all by the eruption, safely in the opposite direction than his dicks were pointing and barricaded by Chris’s legs.

Chris slowly came back online, humming in the back of his throat.

“Feeling good?” Leon asked.

“Calling me baby was a nice touch,” Chris grunted. “You should do that again.”

“I’m saving the pet names for special occasions.”

“Like fucking me into a coma?”

“It’s a very special occasion for me.”

Chris traced his face with eyes alone. “I am… so happy that I get to have this with you. That, out of everyone in the world, you chose me.”

“Get prepared for disappointment. You haven’t seen my collection of alcohol yet, or how most of the bottles are already half-empty.”

“We’ll work on that.”

“You think you’re going to fix me with sex?”

“That’s not how a relationship works, even I know that. This felt good, and I feel good now that we’ve done this, but sex isn’t the reason why I’m still naked with you in the room. You saw me and you accepted me as I am, and that’s why I didn’t put my clothes back on. The sex helped.” He rested his one leg against Leon. “You don’t fix people with sex. You fix them by proving you’re there for them, by supporting them as they fix themselves. I can’t make you choose to give up alcohol, you have to make that choice yourself. I just want you to know that I’m here for you and I’m going to do what I can to help you realize that you don’t need it. I’ve crawled down that hole before. I know how it feels to get drunk on top of being drunk to avoid the hangover, to avoid remembering the shit we go through. I bet it makes it easier for you to go to sleep at night because that was one of the reasons I did it. I’m not happy about your alcoholism, but I understand you and I want to help.”

Leon stared at him. “Out of everyone in the world, you chose me.”

“I think most people would recognize you as handsome. I appeal to a very specific niche of people that I think only includes you.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“How’s that?”

“Marcy would love to have you over for a Big Dick adventure. No matter how much you disagree, you’ve got at least eight you can use, nine if we’re including your tongue.”

Chris chuckled. “Okay, fine. You and Marcy.”

“Out of two people in the world, you chose – ” Chris hit him – lightly – in the face with a pillow. Leon fell back, laughing.

For a moment, life was good.

And then his abrasions and stitches _really_ started to complain.

Oh, yeah. Their lives were living hell and Leon had been strapped to a metal chair with barbed wire not that long ago.

He pulled himself back up and rested his head on Chris’s raised knee.

“This isn’t going to be easy,” he said. “I’m not easy to deal with. But…”

Chris waited patiently for him to say what he needed to say.

“Don’t… please don’t give up on me.”

“Leon,” Chris said softly. “I don’t plan on ever letting you go.”

Leon kissed his knee again. “Then don’t let me go.”


	6. Family and Friends - Support

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Leon gets called a monster fucker. I actually love stories where Leon gets fucked by a BOW and gags for it - this story may or may not be a testament to that - but Leon in this story does not see himself as a monster fucker or appreciate the fact that the BSAA at large thinks he's been fucked by BOWs in the past of his own free will. He reacts very negatively to the accusations to the point where he has vivid thoughts of what it would have been like if he had been raped by past BOWs he had fought against and vomits. He has not actually been raped, he will not be raped in this story, but his mind goes down a very unhelpful 'what if it HAD happened?' path. Luckily, he has Chris and he has his good friend Alexander over in the Eastern Slav Republic to talk to because I support a healthy Leon who can talk about at least a handful of his problems. 
> 
> Again, Leon has VIVID THOUGHTS ABOUT BEING RAPED, but IS NOT ACTUALLY RAPED and WILL NOT BE RAPED. These thoughts have a NEGATIVE EFFECT ON HIM. He does not want to roleplay about it, he does not want to act them out, and he will at no point roleplay about being raped or actually be violated against his will in this story. I just want to be clear on this in case this makes any readers feel unwell or anxious. 
> 
> Don't worry, though, everything gets better. I promise.

They cleaned up as best as they could. Chris promised to pay for Leon’s new bed, whatever he chose to go with, and Leon was already planning on whipping out his laptop once they got to where Chris was hunkering down so they could go over bed options together. Leon grabbed a bag of essential items and they made their way out only two hours after they had arrived.

Leon felt good. His body hurt, having pushed it too hard, too soon, but he felt _good_. Chris hesitantly took his hand, like he thought Leon might pull away. Leon only pulled him closer, bringing Chris’s knuckles to his lips and pressing a kiss to rough skin.

The ride to the BSAA branch took long enough that Leon dozed in his seat, soft jazz playing from Chris’s Spotify account and letting his tired mind rest.

“We’re here,” Chris said, bringing Leon back to full consciousness. Chris was experienced enough to not touch him as he resurfaced. He smiled brilliantly when Leon opened his eyes. “Hey, there, sleepyhead.”

“Hey there, Redfield.” Leon looked out the window. “If your bed isn’t big enough for the both of us, I’m sleeping on you.” He tried to figure out the logistics of how he would do that without irritating his lacerations as they got out of the vehicle and got inside. Chris checked them in at the front desk with an agent that side-eyed Leon in a way that Leon… didn’t like.

He stared emotionlessly back at the agent until the younger man backed down and turned his evil eye to his computer.

They walked side by side to Chris’s temporary quarters without touching, Leon on edge around strangers and Chris’s face set in stone.

The moment they were in Chris’s apartment was a different story. Chris wrapped his hand around Leon’s and pulled him in for a kiss, sweet and innocent. “Ready for bed?”

“Yeah,” Leon answered. “I have nightmares. You should be ready for that.”

Chris shrugged. “I don’t dream anymore. Or, if I do, I don’t remember them. Rebecca has surveillance of me sleeping, so I know I don’t move around much, and I’m only out for three hours at most. I’ve found out that I don’t actually need to rest every night. Don’t be afraid to wake me up if you need me.”

“Alright. I’ll keep that in mind.” He’d rather get wrapped in barbed wire again then wake Chris up and seek comfort from a nightmare like an infant. He wisely did not say that. If the situation was reversed and Chris said he had nightmares, Leon would have told the other man to rely on him as well.

He debated where to undress. On one hand, Chris had already seen him naked. On the other, Leon had had a very emotional day and though he felt scraped hollow in a cleansing way, he also didn’t want to feel that vulnerable again so soon. The problem was that Chris’s temporary living space didn’t have its own bathroom as there were only communal restrooms and showers at this base.

“I need to change,” Leon told Chris.

The other man glanced at him. “You want to change back to back?” There was hope in his voice. Leon realized that Chris felt the same way.

“Back to back,” Leon agreed.

They faced opposite walls as clothes came off and then on. “Ready to go to bed?” Leon asked without turning around, just in case.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Chris, for eight obvious reasons, preferred to rest without a top on and belly down. He wore loose shorts, though, and climbed under the comforter immediately. He pushed up on his elbows and watched to see where Leon would squeeze himself. The bed was just wide enough and just long enough for Chris and took up most of the apartment; if Leon had to guess, it was probably at least three double beds pushed together, two side by side and then one length-wise against the foot of the top two beds. It wasn’t likely that a California King-size mattress had been pushed through the doorway. Leon wore long sleeves and pajama pants to bed and opted to stay above the covers. He climbed on top of Chris and felt the shift of appendages just below the surface, massaging him. Some peaked over the top of the cover and curled around him, as if to keep him from falling off.

“You run too hot,” Leon reasoned when Chris tried to frown at him over his own shoulder – and failed. His disappointed noise was still heard, though. “I’ll fry under there with you.”

“Fair point.” Chris wasn’t very flexible these days, tentacles excluded, but he managed to swing an arm around and pull Leon’s hand into his own, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Sweet dreams.”

“Good night.”

~::~

In places, the barbed wire had torn to the muscle. In other, it left behind only slight abrasions. Overall, any amount of stretching or exercise was likely to tear him open _somewhere_ and there were some exercises that were necessary for physical therapy such as at his wrists and ankles. After his stay in the hospital, most of his wounds were sealed and he could do some _light_ stretching to keep up flexibility. Leon had about as much a desire to tear open a stitch as he did to face down Ania and her mother a second time, which was a value in the negatives.

So, he stuck to his light stretching. He felt every shift of muscle and skin like an uncomfortable burn, like his body was ready to split open on him no matter how considerate he was. He had claimed a yoga mat for his own in the BSAA sponsored gym while Chris was practicing a light touch on the punching bags. The goal was to _not_ destroy them.

Leon was smirking constantly as punching bag after punching bag was decimated. Chris seemed to have a staring problem… and Leon wasn’t even _trying_.

He finished up, body a little jittery from agitating his injuries. A muscle in his right thigh was jumping from overexertion. As far as he could tell, though, there was no blood.

He sauntered over to Chris, leaning an arm casually against the other man’s side as he replaced another punching bag. “Having fun?” he teased.

“Loads,” Chris answered sarcastically. “So much.”

Leon lowered his voice. “Want to go have a different kind of fun?” He may or may not have brought some equipment with him.

Chris froze. His tentacles undulated. “That. Um. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Leon agreed. “I’m done here anyway.”

“You should be taking it easy,” Chris hissed.

Leon flicked a tentacle. “I _will_ be taking it easy. I brought lube this time.”

Chris released a deep, tortured groan. “I have to… I have to take care of this first.” He glanced pointedly at the mess of busted skins and mounds of sand left behind by the destroyed punching bags. “And record how many punching bags there _aren’t_ anymore.” Now he glared accusingly at Leon, who leered unrepentantly.

“I’m innocent for once,” he pointed out. “I was just doing some doctor-prescribed physical therapy.”

The other man’s expression said that he didn’t believe Leon for a goddamn second. “If you help me out, it’ll get done faster.”

“I sweep up the sand and you take care of the bags?”

“Deal.”

Chris hefted the bags and what was left inside of them into his arms and wandered off to take care of them. Leon found a custodial closet and dragged over a garbage can and broom to clean up what was left over.

He was on his third dustbin scoop when an agent approached him. He recognized her face from files he had read months ago, one of the women who had been on that first Poland mission with Chris. She was the medic and yet he couldn’t recall her name.

She was not giving him a friendly look.

“Listen, Kennedy,” she said, and the tremor in her voice said that she had had to sum up a good deal of courage to do this. Leon gave her the full force of his attention. “I know about your reputation, okay? We _all_ do.”

Leon frowned. Mouthed to himself, “ _Reputation?”_

She kept going. “Gary saw you come in last night with the Captain. We all know there isn’t a guest bed in there.” Why did she look like she was about to start crying? “How _dare_ you take advantage of the Captain when he is so… _emotionally vulnerable_ right now?”

“Wait,” Leon interrupted, eyes narrowed. “What reputation?”

The medic stared at him like he was an idiot. “You know!”

“I… really don’t.”

She glanced around nervously. Repeated in a lower voice, “You _know_.”

Leon leaned in and said in just as low a voice, “I _don’t_.”

The medic hissed, “You’re a _monster fucker_. We all know! We’ve all heard the stories of Leon Scott Kennedy getting it up the ass from Lickers, okay? And, listen, I wasn’t going to judge because –”

“ _I have a reputation as a fucking what?_ ”

Leon did not scream, ever. The few times he had had been under extreme and painful duress. In that moment, though, he yelled loud enough for it to echo off the walls and overcome the churn and clang of exercise machines. The few other agents in the room stopped what they were doing and stared at him.

Leon looked them each in the face, trying to see if they really thought that.

He crowded into the medic’s space, practically _spitting_ with rage. “You’re out in the field, you’ve seen these things yourself. You know they’ve been tortured and brainwashed and infected, that their only desire is to spread their virus and to _kill_. And you think that I, what, survived this long by pulling down my pants and letting every fucking Tyrant and Licker from here to Spain take a turn?”

“I wasn’t going to judge you, but –”

“ _No_. I have _never_ let any of those fucking monster touch me like that. The single time they got inside of me was _against my will_ when I was forcibly injected with _Las Plagas_.” He was breathing hard. He caught himself before he could take a full dive into panic, forcing it back. _‘This is a mission,’_ he told himself, made himself believe it. _‘You lose your cool on a mission, you die. Keep it steady. Stay calm.’_ He was very far from calm but telling himself otherwise helped to stop his hands from shaking.

The problem with forcing his calm was realizing where she was going with this.

“You think that I’m with Chris because he has the I-virus? You think the only reason I want a relationship with him is because of how he looks?”

She was crying, face white. She didn’t sob, but the tears left tracks down her cheeks. “Oh, so, you aren’t – ?”

“No,” he said softly. “I’m not. These monsters don’t want sex. They want to kill and breed, and they don’t breed the way the rest of us do.” Chris was… an exception to that rule, as he was the exception to most rules. “I’ve watched BOWs tear apart children, friends, families… I’ve fought them for years, feeling like I’m fighting a losing battle… And you thought I was taking them for joy rides? They are mindless killers.” He rubbed at his temples and forced himself to count his breaths. “You know what? Even if I was… even if I’ve been fucked by every Licker and Tyrant and zombie I’ve come across, why would you lump them together with your Captain? Chris is nothing like them.”

She glanced away, a telling sign.

Maybe Chris was nothing like other BOWs in personality or temperament, but she and other agents like her still saw a monster.

Leon saw Chris through their eyes for a moment: A legend, their Captain, a founder of the BSAA and a good man. And then, after being infected with a variant strain of the t-Virus: A Tyrant with their boss’s face, tentacles writhing across his back, requiring little rest and with the strength to shatter punching bags without trying to.

Leon just saw Chris and Chris’s smile and the guy who loved his little sister and wanted to make the world a better place. He saw the guy who had cradled Rebecca on that rooftop in New York while administering the cure for her infection, his relief when she turned out okay. He saw the guy who grieved the loss of every man and woman he lost in the field, even if he only had seconds to grieve before he had to keep going.

And, yeah, he saw the mutations. He saw them and he _liked_ them…

Oh, shit.

He liked them.

Chris’s body before had been eye candy but his body now was an amusement park and Leon just wanted to ride all the rides. He had straddled those thighs as thick as his torso, he had fellated those tentacles, had gotten horny just looking at those twin dicks, had been inside of that boulder-tight ass… Had kissed that mouth, felt that tongue inside of him.

Chris barely looked human anymore and Leon had been taking full advantage of his new features.

He looked exactly like the Tyrant he had faced back in Raccoon City in 1998, except he still had Chris’s face and his mouth was inspired by a shark and he had eight extra appendages. Had Leon wanted to climb that Tyrant like a tree?

The more he thought about it, the more he knew the answer was no. He’d been terrified for his life, confused by the turn reality had taken.

There was no fear with Chris. Chris was safe.

“Instead of judging me,” Leon told her. “You should be judging yourself. I’m not the one who sees Chris as a monster.”

She ducked her head. “Sorry,” she croaked.

“I’m not the one you should say sorry to.”

“I am, though. You’re right. I’ve been out there, I’ve fought these things.” She chuckled mirthlessly. “This one mission, I got caught on barbed wire and it ripped my shirt right open –” She stopped. Glanced at the stitches just above the collar of his V-neck long-sleeve under armour and then looked away. “Sorry.”

Leon was actually curious to see where that story was supposed to go, but not enough to continue this conversation. “I’m leaving,” he told her. He handed over the broom. “This is your mess now.”

She accepted the duty without complaint and got to work like she was repenting for her sins. Leon thought she might end up sweeping and sanitizing the entire gym floor just by her wobbly, determined expression.

He felt hurt and angry and confused. Someone at some point in history had turned to a buddy and said, “I bet that DSO agent fucks Lickers.”

And that buddy had said, “You mean Leon S. Kennedy? Yeah, man, I bet he’s a slut for BOWs.”

Leon knew he looked good with his clothes on, but what in his physique, in his mannerisms, in his _actions_ made people think that he spread his legs for every monster that was specifically created to kill him and the rest of the human race?

He had a terrifying image of him doing just that in Eastern Slav Republic with the Tyrants. They made Chris look _small_.

He saw himself trapped underneath one of them, dick as long as his leg… its face cold and unfeeling, touch impersonal, using Leon like a means to an end, something to be destroyed and left broken. They would have fucked his corpse after their dicks destroyed his entire organ system by brute force.

Leon lurched for the locker room, collided into one of the restroom stalls, and lost his breakfast in the toilet. The image was stuck: Him dead, the giant BOWs uncaring, still moving.

_‘Think about something else. Anything else.’_

Claymation movies.

It popped in suddenly, without prompt.

He and Chris hadn’t had much free time between New York and Poland, so they had only managed three movie nights, quiet except for the film and the crunch of Leon’s choice of snack. The silence had been welcomed. Leon had wanted to open up a conversation, had wanted to hint at possibly dating, but the peace was had been so good that Leon always nodded off by the middle of the movie and woke up to Chris covering him with a blanket. In the mornings, they would split up – Chris for his morning run and Leon for breakfast.

After Poland, it hadn’t come up.

Leon shakily got to his feet and cleaned off as best he could at the sink. His toothbrush was in his duffel bag so he gargled water and hoped for the best.

They should watch a Claymation movie. Would that be okay? He’d gotten Chris riled up with the promise of sex and now he knew he was going to have to rescind that offer. The idea of sex at that moment was –

Oh, God, mutant Simmons. That huge eyeball focused on Leon as he –

Leon gagged, arms going tight around his belly like he was trying to protect himself.

The Lickers –

He thought of Alexander controlling the Lickers, red eyes focused on Leon. The Lickers, an extension of his will, would only treat Leon as gently or roughly as their Master wanted them to.

Leon snorted, a wet, painful sound. He should call Alexander. He’d start the conversation with, “Hey, did you ever think of fucking me with the Lickers?” and it would end with Alexander scrounging together his money to afford a plane ticket to the states just so he could wheel up to Leon, shoot him in the head, and then roll over him.

Out of all the scenarios, though, it was the best. He trusted Alexander and considered him a friend. The idea of him using the Lickers on Leon led to the fantasy of Alexander commanding the Lickers to hold him down just so he could yell at Leon for a solid half hour about the wounds he had been accumulating and call him the stupidest American he had the displeasure of knowing. They he would hug Leon because, strangely enough, Alexander was the kind of man to hug his friends when he wasn’t taking the full responsibility of a civil war on his shoulders.

Leon washed up again, just because he felt unclean. Like maybe the mutant Simmons was watching him and _wanting_ him and about to –

The door opened. The locker room was already crowded with lockers, the communal showers, and the line of restroom stalls, so Chris ducking in only made it feel smaller.

Not in a bad way, Leon realized. Chris made Leon feel more secure in his surroundings. Maybe there was a mutant Simmons, but he’d have to get through Leon _and_ Chris before he could actually touch Leon in a perverse way.

Chris dragged in a slow breath, face twisting. “Did you throw up? Are you okay?”

Leon swallowed thickly. “I’ll be fine,” he said, which was as close to honesty as he could get at the moment. He wasn’t fine, but he would be. “Chris, would… Would you be down for watching a movie?”

Chris was obviously confused. Watching a movie was not the plan Leon had staged before they separated. All the same, a slow, uncertain smile spread across his face. “Claymation good enough for you?”

Leon smiled back, thankful. “Just what I’m in the mood for, actually.” He walked up to the other man, _looked_ up at him. The ridged, white faces of Tyrants he had fought in the past with emotionless eyes were nothing compared to Chris’s gray complexion, his scruffy face and warm, brown eyes. His skin was rough, but his touch was always considerate.

Hesitantly, Leon opened his arm and went in for a hug. Two massive arms and eight extra appendages came around him, protective and adoring.

“What happened after I left, Leon?” Chris asked. He was no idiot, even if that was what Leon sometimes called him. “Did someone say something? Do something?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m sure they feel worse about it now than I do.”

“So it was Lisa,” Chris guessed. “I saw her sweeping up the entire gym.”

So that was her name.

“I’ll be okay.”

“I don’t doubt that. But you’re not okay right now.”

“For _fuck’s sake_ , Chris, can we watch a movie or not?” He felt Chris go rigid against him, their two dominant personalities about to clash – and then Chris just let it go. He cupped a massive palm over the back of Leon’s head and pressed a kiss to his scalp.

“I’m sorry,” Leon said. “You didn’t deserve that.”

“I care about you. I want you to talk to me when people hurt you. But I know we’re both too hotheaded to tell each other everything. You’re Leon S. Kennedy – you’re going to want to solve a lot of problems by yourself.”

According to Chris’s colleagues, he was also going to want to hop on some – oh, fuck, Curtis Miller after his third mutation. Leon could hear his own voice warning Angela that Curtis wanted to breed, but now he saw the monster come at _him_ –

“I’m Chris Redfield,” the other man continued. “I’m going to want to solve a lot of those problems with you. We’ll figure out a common ground.”

Leon clenched the fabric of Chris’s shirt in his fists, could hear a Velcro strap about to give. “Can you stop being the better partner for one minute? Just one? Let me feel like I’m pulling my own weight in this relationship.”

Chris hummed. “Nope.” He wrapped a palm around Leon’s bum and lifted him straight into the air, cradling him against his chest.

“Chris!”

“Leon!”

“Put me down now or else I’m getting Rebecca’s tranquilizer gun.” He wanted to beg, _‘Don’t let them see me like this.’_ Carried away like a fainting princess after the scene he caused in the gym. He didn’t doubt some part of that would eventually reach Chris’s ears; given how bad Lisa felt, she might be the one to tell Chris everything and apologize for her actions.

Had Chris already heard the rumors? No, he couldn’t have. If he had heard them, if he had believed them, he wouldn’t have been so afraid of being vulnerable to Leon last night. How could he have avoided the rumors, though? Was it a conscious effort on everyone else’s part not to tell the man they knew saw Leon the most out of all of them?

Chris bumped their foreheads together. “I’m blocking the door, honey. No one’s getting in unless I move and no one’s here right now. Let me hold you for a second, please?”

“There’s another door.”

Chris shifted around until his body blocked the door leading out into the corridor from opening and his back faced the door that opened into the gym area. From this angle, no one could see Leon.

Foreheads still pressed together, Leon sighed unthinkingly into Chris’s face. The man’s exresspion scrunched up adorably. “That is _revolting_.”

Leon chuckled, which only made Chris’s expression twist more. He mercifully turned his head away into Chris’s neck so that he didn’t have to suffer Leon’s vomit breath.

“Come back here,” Chris murmured. “You think I haven’t smelled worse?” He nudged at Leon until he turned his face back up. Chris put their foreheads together again, all extremities but his legs holding the DSO agent close.

“I should brush my teeth before the movie,” Leon murmured.

“That’s a good plan.”

It wasn’t until someone’s full body connected with the door that Chris put him down. The body kept trying to shove its way through, but Chris was unmovable.

“Any recommendations for tonight’s Claymation?” Chris asked. He stepped aside and an agent tumbled in.

The agent looked up at Chris wide-eyed. “Oh. Hey, Captain.”

“Hey, Scott. Good workout?”

Scott glanced at Leon and then away. He had been in the gym when Leon had had his meltdown. “Yeah, Captain,” Scott said to the floor. “I hope you both have a good night.” He made a beeline for the showers.

Chris stared after him for a moment. He looked down at Leon. “Seriously, though, what happened in there?”

Leon shook his head. “Not right now.” He only ever started looking at Claymation titles because of Chris, so he said the first title that popped into his mind. “ _Frankenweenie_.”

Chris was unimpressed. “For the last time, Leon, you do not look like Frankenstein’s monster.”

“Neither do you.”

There was a moment that was deep and profound and there were no words for the way Chris looked like he didn’t believe Leon but _wanted_ to.

Leon thought, _‘Fuck it,’_ and grabbed Chris’s hand, pulling him out of the locker room. No point in being subtle. Everyone already knew that Leon was a ‘monster fucker’ apparently, and they thought Chris was a monster. He felt vindictive enough to live down to their expectations if it meant they hated him more than they were afraid of Chris.

They ended up watching _Coraline_.

“This is a kid’s movie?” Leon asked toward the middle of it. “This shit’s terrifying.” He was sprawled over Chris’s lap and chest, chewing on popcorn they had absconded with from the communal kitchen.

“Right?” Chris rumbled. “It’s nice, though. The girl wins in the end.”

“Not the other kids.”

“We can’t save them all,” Chris told him with bone-deep exhaustion.

Leon looked up at him.

Chris shrugged a huge shoulder. “The least we can do is our best.”

~::~

Chris had to leave the next day and Leon went on a breakfast date with Sherry after she called about his morning plans. He ordered a full platter of breakfast foods – eggs, pancakes, bacon, and hashbrowns. He groaned when it arrived at their table, splitting it in half with his daughter-in-all-but-biology. “I love breakfast.”

She laughed. “I know.” She pushed the bacon and eggs back on his plate and made off like a bandit with the entirety of his fluffy, buttermilk pancakes.

Leon squinted at her. “You love bacon. I got two orders of bacon because you always take my bacon.”

She doused the pancakes with hot sauce.

“What,” Leon said blankly, “the fuck is wrong with you?”

Sherry peeked at him from under her eyelashes, chewing a forkful of Satan’s pancakes. She was hesitant. Leon wasn’t used to ‘hesitant’ when it came to the strong-willed woman before him.

“If I’m happy,” she said, “Will you be happy with me?”

This was a trap. “Depends on what makes you happy.”

“Leon,” she warned.

“It really depends on what makes you happy,” he reiterated. “Sometimes, people do things that don’t make them happy, but makes them think that they’re happy. I don’t want to say ‘yes’ and then find out that you’re in an abusive relationship or buying oxycodone off the street corner.”

She was not pleased with that answer.

Leon sighed and added, “I know you know better than to do drugs unless medically prescribed. You would be surprised how easy it is to fall into an abusive relationship, though.”

Finally, Sherry relented. She took her bottom lip between her teeth and weathered it for a moment. When she released it, there was an expression of determination on her face. She reached into her sling bag, pulled out an envelope, and slid it across the table to Leon with gusto.

“I want you to be the first to know,” she whispered. “You’ve done so much for me… Given up a lot that you can never get back.”

“Sherry, I –”

“I know. You love me. You would do it all again, even though this life makes you miserable and you smile less and less every time I see you. After you, I’m going to tell Claire. I just… I wanted to do this one at a time. I waited a few months to make sure I didn’t get anyone’s hopes up, but I decided it was time to let you know.”

Leon was getting a rough idea of what she was talking about and his heart was going crazy. He opened the envelope slowly, hands clammy and –

There it was. The ultrasound image was a grainy gray with a black background. In a gap of black was a large head attached to a round belly and thin limbs, looking very alien and also unmistakably human.

Sherry stood up and pulled at the sides of her sweater until it hugged her small, rounded belly. Her smile was watery. “Surprise!”

Leon’s mouth was gaping open, image in hands but he couldn’t feel it between his fingers. He stared up at her with wide eyes. “This is yours?” he asked like a very intelligent person.

“Yes!” she laughed. “It’s mine.”

He flew from his seat to envelope her in his arms, swinging her in small circles. Her body weight against his stitches made his body throb painfully, but it was worth it because she was –

“You’re pregnant!” He pressed a kiss to her blonde hair, to her temple.

Abruptly, he put her down, holding her at arm’s length. “Have you gotten leave from work?”

“Yes.”

“Are you taking care of yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Eating enough?”

“Yes!”

“Was this something you wanted?”

She stroked her belly softly. “Yes,” she answered with aching gentleness.

“Is it…” He braced himself. “Is it Jake Muller’s?”

She chuckled nervously. “How would you react if I said yes?”

He groaned despairingly. “You deserve so much better… Is he going to stick around and raise this kid or do I have to kill him and do it myself?”

“Bold of you to think I’d leave anything behind for you to kill if he tried to leave us now.”

“Fair point.” He held his hands to either side of Sherry’s belly without touching. Leon glanced at her for permission.

“Go ahead. This is your granddaughter. We haven’t picked a name yet.”

“My –” He swallowed back so many emotions and cradled her belly in his hands. “You’re still so small…”

“We’re okay,” Sherry said, sensing his concerns. “I’m sixteen weeks in. We just wanted to be sure that she was here to stay. My OB-GYN says that we’re doing great.”

He pulled her into another hug. “If you need anything, you let me know. If it’s 2 in the morning and Muller won’t get you pickles and mayonnaise, I’ll beat the shit out of him and get it myself.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that.” Sherry rolled her eyes. “He’s been a lot more involved than I actually thought he would be. I knew he wouldn’t leave when I told him, I knew he cared about me, but now he’s… Sometimes, I think he’s more excited to be a parent than I am!” Sherry giggled. “This is going to be a daddy’s girl and I am going to have to push Jake off a building to get any alone time with her, I just know it.”

“If you push him off the building, your daughter might be upset with you. Let me push him off the building for you.”

“No, I want my baby to love her grandfather.”

“Her g-” Leon knuckled away a tear before it could get anywhere, that traitorous little bastard. “That makes me sound old, Sherry.”

“You _are_ old, Leon.”

“You’re the one robbing the cradle, little lady.”

“I’m only six years older than him!”

Leon smirked.

“Shut up. _I’ve_ heard that someone _else_ getting busy with someone six years older than him.” Sherry gave him a telling look.

Leon flushed. “First of all, rude. Second of all, _how_ did you hear that?” They hadn’t even done anything until this past week. Leon hadn’t even told Claire yet.

… But Chris could have told Claire.

“Claire told me,” Sherry informed him, confirming his fears. “She says that Chris sounded like a teenage girl going to prom with the most popular guy at school when he told her, and she’s upset that you haven’t told her yet.”

“Like a teenage girl…” He thought of 8-foot tall Captain Chris Redfield of the BSAA laying on his bed, idly kicking his legs in the air and twirling his hair while he gushed about a boy crush. He cupped a hand over his mouth to keep from losing his mind.

Sherry broke down into sinister cackles at his expression. “Right? Isn’t that cute?”

So cute.

“Never call Chris a teenage girl to my face again,” he warned her.

“No promises. But, yeah. You can’t say shit because the age difference between you and your boo is the same as the age difference between me and mine.”

“Did you just call him my _boo_?”

“He’s your big boo thing. Your not-so-short shortie.”

“I am begging you, Sherry, _please_. Please stop.”

But he was grinning. Shoulders shaking as he tried to contain himself.

Sherry made her voice high and nasally like a child’s: “Your pumpy-umpy-umpkin.”

Leon threw his head back and laughed.

He was so glad that he got to have her in his life. Being forced to work for the government as their expendable lapdog was worth it to make sure he didn’t lose her.

~::~

 _“Hello? Agent?”_ Leon could see the scowl on Alexander’s face through the tiny rectangle of his phone screen. _“Why are you calling me? Are you dying? Why are you making me suffer looking at your American face?”_

“I’ve missed you too,” Leon said. “Apparently, all of my other friends and family already know, so I thought I would give you an update on my life.”

 _“You have become a movie star?”_ Alexander guessed, a single eyebrow raising. _“If you are making so much money, send some to me so I can make repairs on my school.”_

Leon made a note to give a donation soon enough. He didn’t spend much because he didn’t need much. The most that ever came out of his salary was covering what his health insurance didn’t following his mission-related injuries; fortunately, his health insurance was better than most others and his copay was never more than he could cover at a time. He had a healthy savings account.

“I am not a movie star.”

_“You have no money? You are of no use to me.”_

“I actually have a significant other.”

This got Alexander’s attention. His passivity dropped and he was suddenly invested in the conversation. _“Are you happy?”_

Leon considered this. “Yeah. I am.”

Alexander studied his face closely. Once he found what he was looking for, he nodded sharply. _“Good. Make sure no one takes your happiness from you, agent. I may give you a hard time, but you… you do deserve to be happy.”_

“That’s probably the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

_“Do not ruin it by being a stupid American.”_

“There you are.”

_“What is she like?”_

Leon considered how best to answer this. “Not a she, first of all.”

Alexander’s eyes narrowed. _“A man?”_

“Yeah.”

The other man absorbed this slowly. _“Alright, I have accepted it. Continue.”_

“He’s a good man.”

_“I would not have you accept any other kind.”_

“You think you can control who I do or don’t date?”

 _“Yes,”_ Alexander answered simply with no uncertainty on his handsome face.

“He looks just a little bit like you,” Leon admitted. “If you squint and turn your head a bit.”

_“I see. You could not have me, so you settled for second best.”_

Leon snorted. “Absolutely,” he drawled. “That’s exactly it. My heart breaks every night when I realize it’s not you in bed next to me.”

_“Rest in peace knowing that he will never be as good as me and your lust for me will never fade.”_

“Ouch.” Leon got a beer out of his fridge and popped it open. The thunderous glare Alexander sent him through the phone made him instantly defensive. “What?”

_“Put it back, agent.”_

“It’s my first one.”

_“It will be far from the last. Put it down or I end the call.”_

Leon sneered and went to end the call himself, thumb over the red button. He couldn’t push it.

He missed his friend.

Leon was still angry as he dumped the beer down the sink, though. “Fuck you, it’s not like you don’t get drunk sometimes.”

_“I am a teacher. I have no time to get drunk.”_

“Maybe I could come over and we’ll go out for drinks sometime.”

_“Or we will stay in and not drink. The last time you drank, you called me crying and saying that you were too tired to live. Do not ever put me in that position again.”_

“I apologized for that.”

_“I have forgiven you. I have been there. I have had the pistol kissing my temple. You are the one who saved me from my own bad decisions, as I recall. I have not forgotten, though, and I will never forget. I am too far away to take the gun from your hands.”_

“I’m not suicidal,” he muttered.

 _“No,”_ Alexander agreed. _“You are just tired and lonely and the alcohol is an old friend. Old friends can talk you into doing things you would never otherwise consider.”_

“You’re the pushiest of my friends when it comes to my alcohol consumption.”

_“When was the last time you called them drunk?”_

“That… is a good point. You’re not the only friend to see me drunk, though.” Chris and Rebecca had that one time in Colorado. Admittedly, he hadn’t been that drunk yet, tipsier than anything. He’d sobered up fast enough to get down to business.

For some reason, Alexander was the one who got his drunk calls.

“I’m sorry,” Leon said again, feeling drained. “You have to deal with me at my worst and you don’t deserve that. You’re dealing with enough as is.”

 _“You are my friend,”_ Alexander admitted. _“I want to help you carry the weight of your problems. I also want you to stop drinking so much that you blackout, call me, and then don’t remember crying to me in the morning while you nurse your hangover.”_

“I have a good network of friends and family here,” Leon told him, opening the fridge to see the others bottles he had. There was alcoholic coffee creamer next to Jack Daniel’s next to lager with very little food in the fridge to make it look like he actually ate. He wasn’t used to being home, which meant stocking up on fresh foods with short expiration dates was a good way to waste a lot of food.

Having a problem was one thing when he felt like it was only hurting himself and his friends walked on eggshells to assure him that they were there for him whenever he was ready to address it. It was another thing when one of his friends was outright telling him that his problem was affecting others in a bad way.

He clenched his hand on the fridge door and swung it shut with more force than necessary.

“I actually got some really good news from my… from my daughter.”

_“You have a daughter? What are you? A slut? Your partner is another man but you have a daughter?”_

“Speaking of which,” Leon said dryly. “That brings up something interesting that I’ve heard recently. To answer your question, Sherry isn’t my biological daughter… or even legally my daughter. I helped raise her and put her in a good home after a… a catastrophe when I was a lot younger. She told me that she’s pregnant and I’m going to be a grandfather.”

_“You look so young. I forgot that you are an old man.”_

“Wow, thanks, Buddy.”

 _“The truth is what it is.”_ The smile Alexander gave him was softer, sadder. Looking into the past at something that would never be. The other man had lost his wife and, as far as his heart would allow, he would never find another love and have children. _“I am happy for you. That is the best news!”_

“I will never have as many grandchildren as you, though,” Leon told him.

Alexander frowned. _“What do you mean?”_

“You’re raising all of these kids,” Leon explained. “And once you’re done with this generation, you’re going to get a new wave of children who look up to you to explain the world and teach them the difference between right and wrong. And those children are going to grow up and remember you as the best and most caring teacher they ever had and they’re going to have their own children.”

The other man closed his eyes and wore an expression of intense love. _“Now I sound like a slut.”_

Leon chuckled.

_“Someone will ask me, ‘how many children do you have?’, and I will say, ‘Oh, forty or so at the moment. I expect to have more next year.’”_

Leon’s chuckles evolved into laughter.

_“And then they will whisper about my lusty ways and I will say, ‘Yes. I have all of these children thanks to an American named Leon S. Kennedy.’”_

Leon’s laughter faded into a small smile.

_“I will tell them, ‘He is a deadbeat and he owes me child support.’”_

“Fuck you.”

 _“Please, no more. How do you think I had all of these children?”_ Alexander laughed at his own joke, Leon echoing him.

This felt good. It was nice to laugh again.

_“Ah, so, this story of you being a slut… Tell me about that.”_

Leon swallowed thickly. “I’m not sure if I want to. I haven’t even told Chris. He’s my partner.”

_“Boring name. Kristov is more respectable.”_

“I like his name just fine, thanks.”

_“You tell yourself that. Tell me this story. I am not your partner, you do not have to worry about impressing me.”_

“Well, when you put it that way…” Leon went into his living room where Chris had used his tongue to make him climax not that long ago. It was good that he had a habit of sleeping in his armchair as the bed he had ordered with Chris during _Coraline_ hadn’t come in yet. “Apparently, there are rumors going around that I… get fucked by BOWs a lot.”

Alexander’s expression was a testament to how fucking stupid that sounded. _“As I recall, the Tyrants that tried to kill us did not make you erect.”_

“If you ask around, apparently I’ve gotten fucked by Lickers and Tyrants both and probably other things. Frankly, I’m terrified to ask if anyone thinks I’ve been gangbanged by zombies.”

_“That would be ludicrous. You would be a zombie if you let that happen. It is also repulsive to think of.”_

“They think I’m only with Chris because I supposedly fuck monsters.”

Alexander squinted. _“I do not follow.”_

“Chris was infected with a variant of the same strain that created the Tyrants we fought together,” Leon explained. “He’s over two meters tall and has that muscle build like a brick wall and some extra appendages.”

The other man stared at him as if he was waiting for the punchline.

“The thing is, he has complete control of himself,” Leon explained. “He’s kind and he’s passionate and he’s a hotheaded idiot, but I can be hotheaded too. He likes Claymation movies and he’s doing all of these exercises to control how much strength he uses in any given situation and to practice his fine motor skills because he doesn’t want to hurt anyone or break anything on accident. And he… cares for me. A great deal.” He remembered Basia’s skull breaking in Chris’s mouth. “He’d do anything for me.”

_“And he is… two meters tall… and has extra appendages.”_

“No one else like him in the world.”

Alexander cursed under his breath, phone showing his ceiling for a moment as he fumbled it. When he came back into view, it was like he had aged ten years. _“You crazy fucking American,”_ the other man mumbled. _“Only you, agent.”_

Leon found that he was holding his breath. Alexander was important to him and he was suddenly aware that he might not have Alexander anymore after this conversation.

But the other man eventually groaned and said, _“I understand.”_

“What?”

_“When I controlled the Lickers, I felt such a connection to them that was intimate. They were me and I was them. They protected me at the loss of their lives because I asked them to. I never had to force them to do anything, only request. When I lost all of them, I missed them. This is different than your man, I know. They would have turned on me in a second if I did not have that connection to them. I can imagine what you feel for this Chris is stronger than what I felt.”_

“That’s… nice of you. Thanks.”

_“You are still fucked up.”_

“Chris is a great man,” Leon defended.

_“Did you have sex with him before or after he became two meters tall?”_

“That’s not a fair question.”

_“Coward. You could not resist.”_

“It’s not like that!”

 _“Agent,”_ Alexander said in a no-nonsense voice. _“You are allowed to like your giant for the way he looks, even if he looks different from everyone else in the world.”_

Leon sighed. “He hates it. He thinks he looks like a monster.”

_“If he looks like what we fought, then he looks like a monster. He simply chooses to not act like one. I have never met him, but I respect him for that.”_

“I love him,” Leon admitted.

_“Is he strong?”_

“What? Yes. Very strong.”

_“How easy is he to kill?”_

“Not easy at all. The only way we’ve been able to take down anyone else with the same virus is by knocking them out with a highly specialized tranquilizer launched through a speargun at close range or sending Chris after them.”

_“He is your best choice at love.”_

Leon frowned. “Why is that?”

_“If he is as strong as you say, then you might never have to know the pain of him dying before you.”_

“We can stop talking about this if it hurts,” Leon offered.

Alexander was staring in a direction away from the camera. Leon thought he was imaging his dearly departed.

Eventually, Alexander said, _“I have a student who reminds me of you. I told her that she is not allowed to sass me as much as she does and all she gave me was more sass. You two have never met, but I blame you.”_

“You’re right to. It’s probably my fault somehow.”


	7. Commitments - Realizing you are a part of something good

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter! Here comes the double penetration I warned about. Leon also gets propositioned at a Waffle House and takes care of it. Somehow, this leads to discovering a new possible kink. There is a baby shower! What's going on with Rebecca and Claire?

Two weeks later, Chris was back in the states and Leon was in Eastern Slav Republic helping Alexander grade papers. Alexander refused to let him drink the ten days he spent there. Leon raged and threw a lamp at the wall, but the wheelchair-bound man only met him yell for yell until Leon finally backed down and bought a new lamp.

He made them equally miserable and they snapped at each other endlessly by the end of the trip, but Alexander still hugged him on his way out.

“Tell your Chris that he deserves better,” Alexander whispered into his ear when Leon bent to return the hug. “You idiot American.”

“Thanks, I already know that.”

“Break my shit again and I break you.”

“I replaced it.”

“Break my shit again and I take your money and then break you.”

“Thanks, it’s nice to know you care.”

All said, Leon _did_ feel better after spending quality time with Alexander. He wanted a beer like an itch under his skin, but Claire sent him a text almost as soon as he got on the plane saying that Chris was going to pick him up from the airport once he got home. There was a winkyface.

Hell yeah, there was a winkyface.

Leon told himself, _‘I can go a little while longer’_ and then felt the need to murder everyone around him for being too loud and nosey and close for the next twelve hours. He held his pounding head in the palm of one hand and almost said, _‘Fuck it, sobriety isn’t worth this shit.’_ He went to flag down a stewardess as he was answering emails, but then he saw he had one from Chris.

The subject line said, _Where’s my Honey?_

The image he sent with it made Leon slam his laptop shot, head whipping around to make sure nobody behind him had seen.

He came face to face with a snotty-faced child with wide, shocked eyes.

“I will give you ten dollars if you never tell anyone what you just saw,” he told the little girl. A glint appeared in her eyes and then her expression smoothed out to be calm and collected. Demandingly, she held out a hand.

Ten dollars poorer but with the will to make it off the plane sober, Leon stared out the window and etched the image he had just seen into his brain so he would never forget the way Chris’s massive hand had been wrapped around his two dicks over his stacked abs, both of them soaked with fluid, a tentacle wrapped around Chris’s upper thigh and pushing between his legs…

Beneath the image, Leon had just barely seen the caption, _There you are._

Leon was _throbbing_.

~::~

Landing in the states, Leon almost chose to not pick up his luggage just to get out of there faster. He knew he was looking for the biggest military vehicle legal for public street usage and he knew that Chris would be in there. No one would dare pull them over and the windows were tinted. Leon could casually slip his pants and briefs down and let Chris’s appendages between his legs, let them touch him as Chris sped them toward a bed, _any fucking bed_ – Leon remembered how Chris had held him up on his own in Leon’s living room and amended that to _no bed required_ – he was really about to lose his fucking mind.

He grabbed his luggage all the same and made a beeline for the entrance. Despite the normal holdbacks of trying to leave an airport, he was out of their in record timing and throwing himself into a familiar Humvee.

“Drive,” he told Chris, who threw his head back and laughed at him.

“In a hurry to get somewhere?” Chris asked, even as he pulled away from the curb.

Leon was already pushing down his pants. He snagged a tentacle and pulled it into his mouth, getting it nice and damp. “Yep,” he mumbled around the tip. He practically slobbered on it.

“Shit, Leon…”

Belatedly, he realized he hadn’t asked if this was okay. He pulled away, hands up. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

“Stop talking, Kennedy. Keep going. Take what you want, honey.” The appendage pushed against Leon’s lips. A definite bulge was undulating in Chris’s pants, making the larger man grimace in discomfort. He still looked expectantly at Leon before turning back to the road. A hand landed on Leon’s bare thigh and pulled his legs apart. “Make yourself feel good.”

“Fuck yeah.” Leon took the tentacle back in, another hand between his legs to rub at his dick. A tentacle nudged him aside and did it for him. The tentacle in his mouth slipped free and wormed between his legs, teasing his cunt. The tip pushed in, just the tip, and then eased out. Every time it pushed, it went in just a little bit more, only to completely retreat. Leon shook his right leg free of his boot, jeans, and briefs and planted his socked foot on the dashboard as a third tentacle filled his mouth.

Chris was breathing hard, basically hissing, in the driver’s seat. The steering wheel was likely not going to survive this ride.

Leon groaned headily when the appendage between his legs finally sank inches into him, the way rough and tight and it felt so fucking good… And still too fucking dry, _damn it_. He hadn’t exactly brought lube to Alexander’s, so he didn’t have anything helpful in his duffel bag.

As if summoned by a greater power, another appendage pushed a small bottle into his hand. Leon pulled off the tentacle in his mouth and raised an eyebrow at Chris. The man did not necessarily blush anymore and yet it was clear that he would if he could in that moment.

“Did you plan this?” Leon asked, slathering the tentacle.

“Maybe,” Chris rumbled as the appendage slipped back inside.

Leon smirked. “You’re so _good_ to me, baby.”

Chris _whimpered_.

There was no pain, not even a burn now, as the tentacle undulated inside of him. A fourth appendage reached under and swirled against his ass hole, unable to push in dry but making Leon _want_.

He was a grunting, sweaty disaster, getting pushed rhythmically up and down in his seat. He had a vague sense of déjà vu when Chris swung without warning into a parking lot with no one else around and parked in one smooth move. Humvee safely no longer moving, he pulled his own tentacle out of Leon’s mouth and replacing it with his tongue, the huge bulk of his body blocking the view out the windshield. A massive arm came up and around, braced against Leon’s door, the appendage between his leg became more fervent, more determined to fuck its way into Leon’s belly. Leon grabbed a hold of that burr cut and tried to give a _very_ positive review by yelling into Chris’s mouth, body spasming as the one tentacle was _still_ rubbing at his dick, making his body oversensitive and about to explode.

He heard a zipper and then Chris was growling as he jerked off. Leon watched that massive hand move over those two dicks like it was porn.

And then, with a twist, the appendage inside of him was so deep that Leon _screamed_. His body launched an orgasm unlike he had ever had before, even when Chris had fucked him with his tongue last time.

Chris hissed against his mouth, their foreheads gently touched. _“Yes_ , Leon, so good. You did so good. Did you take what you wanted?”

“Y-yeah… Fuck, yeah. That was so good.” He sloppily lined kisses along Chris’s jaw. “You going to get me filthy, Redfield?”

Chris glanced down at his dicks as if he didn’t even remember pulling them out.

The look he sent Leon was dangerous in the best way possible.

“While you were gone, I asked Rebecca some questions and learned that a vasectomy would put an end to all of my concerns,” Chris explained in a guttural voice. “Getting a vasectomy was hard as hell, but I found some doctors who were ready for the challenge.” He squeezed his dicks. “If it’s alright with you, I’d like to save these for later.”

Leon stared up at him, dumfounded. A tired throb resonated between his legs as the tentacles retreated. “Oh.”

Chris’s smile turned to a frown. “Oh?”

“Oh!” Leon tried again.

“You’re…. not as excited about this news as I thought you’d be. Do you not want to…”

“I really fucking do,” Leon told him. “And if you’re comfortable with it, then I am all in. I just…” He turned to look out the window as he pulled his clothes back in. “It’s stupid.”

“Leon.” There was a warning in his voice.”

“You’re not going to like what I’m thinking.”

“There are a lot of things I don’t like. Tell me anyway.”

“I’ve had this… idea. Of what our kid would look like.”

Chris’s breath caught. “You want a baby.”

“Not always. It’s just a thought I have every now and then. I want your baby, but I understand why we can’t. I want your baby, but I don’t want to stop taking testosterone. I want your baby, but I don’t. It’s a mess.”

Chris kissed his cheek. “Thank God. I felt like such a creep whenever I thought about you having my baby. It’s nice that we both wanted that, even if we know we can’t.”

“ _How_ is that _nice_? It’s something we both want and we can’t have it.”

Chris pulled him into a one-arm hug. “Our lives have never been easy, honey. It hurts, but we’ll figure out an alternative. Hey, Sherry told me that she’s having a baby. Maybe we can put all of our baby fever into raising our grandkid.”

“She got you with that too?”

“She said because I’m with her honorary father that makes me a grandfather as well.”

The chances of being approved for adoption were zilch, Leon knew without even asking. Any adoption they applied for would have to go through the BSAA because of Chris’s unique situation and the BSAA was not sanctioned to approve adoptions for its agents. The best they could hope for was another Sherry scenario where a child was used as a lab experiment and required special housing and care.

Leon didn’t wish that on anyone. He’d done what he could for Sherry but he knew he hadn’t been able to protect her from everything. Her current career in the war on bioterrorism was a testament to that.

“I’m looking forward to it, honestly,” Leon told him. “Being a grandfather.”

“Me too.”

Leon glanced down. “How are you going to contain those until we can get wherever you’re taking us?”

“With great self-inflicted discomfort.” Watching Chris shimmy around and try to push his dicks back into his already strained pants was funny as hell and also painful to behold. It was also hot as hell.

Chris was saying that he could have those now.

“Could you _not_?” Chris begged. “The car already smells like you and sex. Do you know how hard that makes this for me?”

“Very,” Leon guessed, staring pointedly at his lap.

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Do it for me, you little bitch.”

“Fine, I will!”

“Where are we even going?” Not back to the BSAA branch, he hoped. Yeah, he wanted this, but the idea of walking back in there to have sex with his 8-foot partner did not make him horny.

“Your bed got delivered. Since I was the one who paid, they contacted me. I hope you don’t mind that I let myself in and got it set up?” Chris looked at him contritely. “I wanted it to be a surprise but I just realized how fucking creepy that was.”

“It’s a nice surprise,” Leon informed him. “But, yeah. Definitely let me know before you ever break into my apartment again.” Were they at the stage where Leon should give him a key so he didn’t have to break in? Seemed sudden, and yet Leon honestly considered it.

“Noted.”

They arrived in darkness – Leon was secretly pleased as this meant they could get to his apartment with few to no incidences. Just like last time, they snuck up to Leon’s front door and, just like last time, Marcy’s door opened.

“Can’t talk right now,” Leon informed her before she even opened her mouth. “Big Dick adventures coming my way.”

She cheered for him as he dragged Chris inside and slammed the door shut behind them.

~::~

The idea of riding Chris’s dicks was exciting in thought and wildly difficult to accomplish in reality. Tentacles and lube prepared him for what felt like an hour, their harsh thrusts always stopping just short of making him climax. The sweet burn of appendages up his cunt and ass had him scraping at Chris’s chest with his blunt nails, body lurching as they fucked him hard and then slow. Chris stuffed his mouth with his tongue and ran his hands up and down Leon’s back, grabbing and massaging his ass cheeks and thighs. His dick was spoiled with attention and Chris had discovered that very lightly raking his teeth over Leon’s nipples got a very positive reaction.

Three different times, Leon tried to take those dicks and they always were just slightly too big or too long for even Leon’s comfort. He was getting frustrated. He wasn’t willing to give up, working at relaxing his body more and more into the tentacles while Chris murmured encouragements into his mouth and whined.

Finally, _fucking finally_ , Leon pulled the appendages away and sat up. He grabbed one of Chris’s dicks and positioned it at his cunt, sinking down slowly. Inches from the base, he was making a high-pitched keening sound that he couldn’t stop. He let himself fall the rest of the way and sobbed as he was too full, too wide, as he felt sharp, white pleasure build in his belly. He writhed there, hands braced back on Chris’s massive thighs while his second dick left an oozing trail over Leon’s backside.

“F- _fuck_ ,” Chris whined. “Leon, honey…” His hips rolled, just once, and Leon’s eyes rolled into the back of his head as the dick inside of him lit up _every fucking nerve_. He squeezed down and Chris actually _sobbed_. “Leon, you’re so _tight_.”

“Feel good?”

“So good…”

Leon slowly dragged himself up, reaching for the second. His ass had been fucked wide by the tentacles and he was confident that this was going to work now. The glans-less head popped in without trouble and sinking down on both dicks at the same time…

Leon struggled, arms swinging, not even meaning to fight. He was just so _open_ , feeling like he was being impaled from two directions. Chris caught his hands gently and pressed kisses to his inner wrists, laving his fingers with his tongue.

“Take it slow, I’ve got you,” Chris murmured, panting. His extra appendages supported Leon as he slipped further and further down. His thoughts became nothing but white noise, numb and buzzing, his arms and torso limp and useless. All he could focus on was Chris inside of him, stretching him, making room for himself inside of Leon.

And Leon thought of the Tyrants from the Eastern Slav Republic, how they would split him open dead or alive –

Leon yelled, not a happy sound, and Chris was instantly there.

“Honey, are you okay?” Chris rubbed his upper arms, every appendage working to slowly and carefully free him from Chris’s lap. “Are you hurt?”

Oh, right. He was here with Chris. He stared down at that face, sitting as he was in Chris’s lap, and the nightmarish fantasy faded away. Monster fucker? No…. Just a Chris fucker.

“I’m good,” he rasped, throat dry. He swallowed thickly. “I feel great. Come on.” He kissed the larger man. “Try one more time. I almost had them.”

Chris chuckled. “You’ve taken to this like it’s a personal challenge.”

“Of course it is. I have challenged myself to take both of those dicks.”

“So determined,” Chris teased. He pulled Leon in for a kiss as he slowly, so slowly, brought Leon back down. Leon wrapped his arms around Chris’s shoulders, only possible because Chris was hunched over to reach him. With little thrusts, Chris sank in deeper and deeper, making his mark inside of Leon’s body the likes of which no one else would ever be able to beat.

“Oh, shit,” Leon whispered.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Just… Just realized.” He let out a low, filthy groan as Chris’s dick bumped into his cervix, the noise growing into a wail as Chris continued his slow, careful thrusts and Leon’s body began an equally slow and explosive orgasm. He curled his fingers as much as he could into Chris’s hair and held on for dear life as Chris grunted and hissed beneath him, achieving his own orgasm as Leon squeezed and rippled around both of his shafts.

“I love you,” Leon gasped. “You’re mine, I love you. No one else.”

“ _Leon_ ,” Chris choked. “You too, honey. God, you too, love you too.” Their foreheads met, sharing breath as they rode out their climaxes.

When finally Leon could feel his toes again, he was slumped into Chris’s chest, body a limp noodle. Chris’s half-erect cocks were still homed inside of him, Chris’s hips twitching in small circles.

“We…” Leon cleared his parchment-dry throat. “Are doing that again… next month.”

Chris chuckled under his cheek, overly pleased. “So long from now?”

“Give me time to recuperate, _shit_.”

“Alright. You can have your month of no sex.”

“No one said anything about no sex. You’ve got eight other dicks we can play with that are very considerate compared to your dicks. Besides…” He nipped Chris’s jaw, rough skin scraping against his teeth. “I’m not the only one who wants to get fucked comatose in this relationship.” 

Chris groaned tiredly. “Yeah, I want that. Makes me nervous, though. I didn’t keep good control of myself the time we did that. I don’t want to hurt you on accident.”

Leon kissed his chin. _‘You would never hurt me on purpose,’_ he thought. He amended that Chris _would_ hurt him on purpose in very specific situations, such as following an amnesiac episode or when trying to get Leon to stop a bioterroristic plot to kill everyone in New York… Well, even then, Chris wouldn’t. Things had changed and Leon knew that if there was a repeat – or when, given the frequency of bioterroristic plots to kill everyone – Chris wasn’t going to be as unstoppably forceful as a speeding train and Leon wasn’t going to meet him with the unmovable power of a mountain. They were partners now. They would figure it out even if it meant Leon had to rent a wrecking ball crane and aim for Chris’s thick head.

“We’ll figure it out,” Leon told him.

Chris feathered a hand down his spine. “Ah, yes, applying the entirety of your strategic mind to figuring out how we can have the best sex without getting critically injured.”

“What else would I need such a big brain for?”

Chris laughed. “Do you mind if we clean up and then watch a Claymation?”

“Sure, you can clean up and then watch a Claymation while I sleep on your chest.”

“Sounds like a good deal, I’ll take it.”

~::~

Leon woke up to his phone vibrating at Oh-God-Why in the morning. Blearily, he fumbled for the bedside table without opening his eyes and pressed the call button. Either the world was about to self-destruct or an automated sales pitch was about ruin his night.

Pressing it to his ear and listening to Sherry sob on the other end, he realized it was more toward the former – at least for the heavily pregnant woman.

 _“Leon, remember when, when you said you would wake up at 2 in the morning and, and get me my craving foods? Do you, do you remember that?”_ She was sniffling, trying to hold herself together and failing.

“Yeah, Sherry, I remember that,” he said, sitting up. Chris beneath him opened his eyes, going from unconscious to wide awake instantly. His hands planted on Leon’s hips, squeezing reassuringly as he gave Leon a questioning look. “ _Sherry_ ,” Leon mouthed at him, patting a massive pec. “I remember someone telling me though that J-”

 _“His name shall not be spoken here!_ ” she hissed so suddenly and vehemently that Leon felt his insides go cold.

“What did he do?” he demanded to know, ready to commit murder.

 _“What do you think? He got me pregnant! And now I’m a hormonal beach b-ball! And he, he keeps getting turned on because I’m pregnant with his child, and I’m h-horny but he won’t_ do _anything about it because he’s scared of h-hurting the baby and it’s like, it’s like,_ shit _, Jake, you’re hurting my vagina’s_ feelings _. Now he’s not allowed in the b-bedroom and he’s not worthy of getting my craving foods and c-can you please get me pancakes and hot sauce?”_

Well… Leon _had_ offered…

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll get you some pancakes and hot sauce. What kind of pancakes do you want?”

Her sobbing increased in tempo. _“I don’t kn-oo-oo-ow!”_

Leon had not been properly prepared for the full range of Sherry’s emotions while pregnant but, the more he learned, the more he was glad that he and Chris couldn’t conceive.

“It’s alright,” he soothed, voice low and soft. “Sherry, I’m going to take care of this, okay?” He realized Chris was shaking underneath him and looked down. He promptly slapped Chris upside the head when he saw the bastard was on the verge of laughing. “I know you, don’t I? I’ll make sure to get the right pancakes. Do you know what hot sauce you want?”

 _“_ My _hot sauce! But it’s in the kitchen and I don’t want to talk to Jake right now!”_

“Okay, I’ll grab it from the kitchen on my way in and Chris can sit on Jake, would that make you feel better?”

There was a little cackle. _“Yeah, I’d like that.”_

“Alright. I love you. We’ll be over in a little bit.”

The moment he hung up, Chris lost the fight and bellowed with laughter.

“Heard all of that, did you?” Leon drawled. He rolled off of Chris’s torso and landed on his feet at the bedside. They had both wanted to be available to Sherry whenever possible, as had Claire and Rebecca, and the different couples coordinated their schedules so that at least two people were within an hour’s driving distance of Sherry and Jake at all times. This had meant, for Chris and Leon, relocating. They had made the decision to move in together, for better or for worse considering the relative newness of their relationship. They had found something big enough for them out of the way of the rest of society and were knocking down doorways to make them tall enough for Chris whenever they had time.

Leon was still adjusting to not being a total loner in his downtime now that he lived with his partner while Chris had taken to domesticity like a duck to water. The larger man was working with the BSAA to get all sorts of custom-made appliances that wouldn’t break if all Chris did was press a button. Instead of a stove that looked comically small compared to Chris, it looked comically big compared to Leon. The good news was that Leon’s cooking was awful, so Chris didn’t let him use the stove anyway. Instead, Leon got to vacuum with an average sized appliance and use the guest bathroom because the master bathroom had a toilet worthy of a giant.

Parts of their house were complete while others were caught in the disaster zone of resizing everything that could feasibly be resized. The best news was, because Chris got infected while on a mission, the BSAA was paying for all of the renovations due to a medical clause that stated they were tasked with making any living space accessible to Chris’s specific handicaps. In this case, his handicaps involved being too big and too strong for most housewares.

Leon didn’t bother to change from his pajamas. His sweatpants were slung low on his hips and his under armor long-sleeve shirt had been tugged one too many times at the collar by Chris’s greedy appendages, making it sag at his collarbone. He grabbed his wallet, his phone, and his partner before heading to the Humvee. Chris drove without complaint as Leon dozed against the window. Sure, the DSO agent could stay awake for days at a time, wake up at the drop of a pin, and function like a robot in a life-or-death situation – but he was at home and the most dangerous thing he was going to face were Sherry’s tears. He was half-asleep when he got an essay-long text from his honorary daughter. He squinted at he read it.

Finally, Leon groaned. “She says she doesn’t need us anymore,” he summarized when Chris glanced over to frown curiously at him. “Jake heard that she wanted pancakes and hot sauce and made her three different flavors of pancake from scratch. She’s eating pancakes right now with jalapeno peppers in it. She has decided to forgive him and he has been let back into the bedroom. She is sorry for getting us out of bed.”

Chris chuckled. “You still want to get pancakes?”

Leon checked his phone. It was not actually 2 in the morning – It was, instead, 4 in the morning. He opened Google Maps. “Our only option is takeout from a Waffle House.”

“They have sausage?”

“Probably.”

“I pay, you get the order?”

Leon damn well had his own money and could have done both, but he said, “Sure,” and shrugged. Chris had a habit of wanting to pay for everything but joke was on him: The money Leon saved each month from not having to buy any of his own stuff got donated to TerraSave and the public school Alexander taught at. He was well on his way to be a recognized benefactor for both.

Chris pulled in and waited in the car while Leon went inside and put in an order large enough to make the staff glare at him with pure hatred. He decided to add a very large tip in the hope that they didn’t spit on his bacon. There were truckers eating food and drinking coffee on autopilot at several booths and a few ladies trying to cajole them into a good time for a reasonable fee.

Leon leaned his elbows on the bar, pushing his unbrushed hair from his face and then letting it fall right back into place.

A burly man sat down next to him, eyeing his Leon’s backside. He had the tattoos and leather overalls of a biker. “How much do you go for?”

Leon gave him a dead-ass look of resignation. “Your balls in a handbag and I take your bike.”

The man cackled. “Guessing your not looking to get paid, then?”

Leon meant to say, _“I’m already taken”_ or _“I’m already called for,”_ but his brain got confused and what came out was, “I’m already paid for.” _‘What the fuck, Leon.’_

The biker whistled. “Lucky bastard. How much is he paying?”

Leon glanced at the receipt. “70 dollars and 54 cents.” He had decided to give a 30-dollar tip that had eased the waitress’s/cook’s loathing. It was a _lot_ of food and they were on their skeleton crew. Besides, it was Chris’s money.

“Damn, you’re cheap.” The biker was doing some mental calculations. “I’ll give you a hundred and you can ride me on my bike.”

“So generous,” Leon drawled. “I’ll stick with the deal I have. I’m getting a free meal out of it and at least three orgasms.”

The biker looked at him with clear disbelief. “I can make you feel good too.”

Leon did not want to cause a scene – but he was debating it. He shouldn’t have said he was paid for. He should have said a normal person thing, like he was in a committed relationship.

His tired brain drew up an image of Chris paying a hundred dollars for Leon to fuck him with the Incredible Bulge dildo they had gotten recently. Chris still preferred Leon’s little vibrator, but there was something to be said for fucking him as fast and hard as his mortal shell would allow while trying to hold onto Chris like he was a bucking bronco.

Then he thought about Chris’s deep burr as he would say, _“If you suck my cocks, I’ll give you a nice Benjamin Franklin. All yours, all you have to do is open your mouth and let me feed them to you…”_

Physically fucking impossible to take both dicks in his mouth at the same time, but his mouth filled with saliva all the same. He didn’t even realize he was flushed until the biker next to him leaned in too close for comfort and said, “You like that, boy?”

“For the last time,” Leon warned, because he really didn’t want to end this man’s life at a Waffle House at 4 in the morning. “The answer is no.”

A hand settled on his lower back. “A hundred and fifty. Will you let me wreck that pretty ass for a hundred and fifty?”

Leon made eye contact with the waitress. “Well,” he told her. “I warned him.”

The man was leaning toward him, half out of his seat with his other arm resting in his lap. It was too easy to grab his head in the palm of Leon’s hand and crack it against the bar. The man wailed and crumpled to the ground.

Three other bikers in a corner booth shot to their feet.

Damn. Leon had forgotten they traveled in gangs. The Waffle House had wide bay windows too and bright lights inside while outside was still dark. Chris was getting a perfect view of everything going on from the Humvee.

The good news was that Chris trusted him to take care of himself and knew he was fully capable of dealing with a few road weary bikers.

The bad news was that Chris didn’t always have a good grip on his I-virus-influenced instincts. His Tyrant-variant brain hadn’t caught on to the fact that Leon was physically incapable of being bred by Chris’s dicks and had been known to, from time to time, react as if Leon was pregnant and in grave danger.

That meant that Leon had to take care of this very quickly or else his eight-foot significant other was going to stampede in here and cause a lot of property damage and some medical emergencies. And then Chris would snap out of it and feel really bad and they’d have to schedule an appointment with Rebecca to show him that Chris was fine and the I-virus wasn’t taking over and Leon would spend at least three weeks without being allowed to touch his partner because Chris would think he was going to hurt Leon on accident…

It was a whole thing. Leon would rather avoid it.

Then again, Chris had seen the biker palming Leon and hadn’t divebombed through the windows, so maybe he really was getting a better grip on his t-Virus-variant instincts.

The other bikers looked at Leon, then at their comrade.

“Sorry about him,” the single lady of the group said. “He can be a fucking prick.” She snapped her fingers and the two men with her came up, picked up the moaning pervert, and dragged him into the restroom to clean up. Not a single trucker had looked up from their meal during the debacle. The lady put down a large tip for a round of coffees and came up to Leon. “You handled that well. That was sexy as hell.”

“I am _really_ not interested.”

She held up her hands and backed out of his space. “Cool, man. Have a good morning.” She went after her gang into the men’s restroom, ignoring the deadly look the waitress gave her.

Whether by miracle or by actual effort to make him leave, his food appeared before the gang came back out. The waitress shoved it into his arms, pointed at him, and then at the door. “Get out.”

“Have a nice morning, ma’am,” he grunted as he left.

His arms were full with their food, hopefully what they ordered and hopefully fully cooked without any “special” ingredients like spit or hot sauce. The door popped open just as he reached the Humvee and tentacles picked the paper bags out of his arms and put them in the backseat.

Chris was looking at him with very dark eyes. “Fuck, honey, that was hot.”

“That?” Leon asked. “That was nothing. You’ve seen me take down hordes of zombies and explode BOWs.”

“None of them were interested in you the way he was,” Chris pointed out. “The same way _I_ am.”

Okay, that was definitely Chris’s ‘breed and mate’ instinct talking. Leon found that adorable. Chris saw Leon’s takedown of the biker as Leon letting everyone know he had already chosen a mate and wasn’t going to submit to anyone else.

Leon could see the appeal, honestly. He liked the idea of knowing that Chris had options, was propositioned, and would _still_ choose Leon over everyone else.

“Funny story,” Leon began. “I may or may not have discovered a new kink.”

“Oh, yeah?” Chris pulled out of the parking lot and headed for home.

“How would you feel about paying me a hundred bucks to fuck my mouth like a call boy?”

“Leon,” Chris began slowly, like he was about to say something he had just realized Leon hadn’t known all along. “I can fuck your mouth without paying for it. All I have to do is ask. That’s part of being in an established relationship where both partners are sexually interested in one another.”

Leon felt suddenly very stupid. He glared out the window, not hungry. “Just thought it was a funny,” he lied, now embarrassed by how much he’d liked thinking about it when, clearly, Chris thought it was pointless.

They came to a red light. Chris put a hand on Leon’s thigh and massaged. “You’re cheap like that,” Chris said without even looking at him. “I don’t have to pay shit to get between your legs, I just have to call you honey and flash a dick and you’re gagging for it.”

Leon stared at him, gap-mouthed. “What the _fuck_ , Redfield?”

The other man flinched and drew his hand away. “Too much?”

Leon on principle did not like being called easy, but Chris called him easy in such a dark, tantalizing way that Leon knew he meant easy only for one person. He glanced, made sure the light was still red. “I don’t know. Look at me and say something else.”

“Well, now I’m embarrassed.”

“Please, baby?” Leon burred, pulling Chris’s unresisting hand back to his inner thigh, close to the V of his legs. “Look at me and say something else fucking filthy.”

Chris was always weak for being called “baby” and complied. He obviously had to take a moment and reapply himself to the character. His face wasn’t blank, wasn’t indifferent. It was hungry and possessive, like Leon belonged to him and existed to fulfill his needs. “Don’t you want to be a good cumbucket for me, _honey_? You always want to get split on my dicks and fucked like a cock sleeve.” 

Leon wheezed like he had just sprinted a full mile. “I like this,” he decided, hand squeezing Chris’s wrist. “You like this?”

“Thank God. I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve almost called you a cockslut during sex.”

“Let’s not get too adventurous. I know someone else who likes to get fucked hard enough that they cry.”

The light had been green for awhile now. With no one pulling up behind them, they hadn’t felt compelled to move. Chris finally took notice and continued driving.

“Here’s a thought,” he started plaintively. “Why don’t _you_ pay _me_ a hundred bucks to fuck my greedy hole?”

Leon groaned like a very unsexy accordion. “Two hundred and you give me a blowjob afterward while you’re still crying.”

“Sometimes,” Chris told him, “I really think we were meant to be together. Like destiny took pity on us and said, ‘Let’s put these two lonely, half-broken, kinky-ass bastards together and have them argue over whose turn it is to do laundry.’”

“That’s adorable.”

“I have the right to put on my tightest pants before you proposition me for money in our own home.”

“We have to stop by a bank, I don’t have cash on me.”

Chris cursed like the veteran he was and swung the Humvee around in the opposite direction in search of an ATM.

~::~

They had a baby shower before Sherry and Jake were to go into hiding and deliver their child secretly. Between the daughter of William and Annette Birkin, two of Umbrella’s top virologists, and the son of Albert Wesker who had successfully infected himself with a project W prototype virus, the child of Sherry Birkin and Jake Muller was going to be highly sought after by multiple groups for notorious reasons. The child was undoubtedly going to be very special with world changing wonders in her DNA. Leon, Chris, Rebecca, and Claire had already blocked off the period of time Sherry was estimated to go into labor so that they could be on security detail and keep the young woman safe. Jake Muller had been taking lessons on how to deliver the child himself should worse come to worse. Rebecca wasn’t that kind of doctor but had incidentally delivered a child during her time as a field medic. She chose to take lessons with Jake just in case something happened to the expecting father and a third option was necessary.

Sherry tagged along because the absolute worst-case scenario was that she would have to deliver her own baby and she wasn’t taking any chances. Her OB-GYN had agreed to teach them and was helping them find and purchase necessary items to make the birthing easier while also informing them of household items that could be used as substitutions.

The fact that Sherry had a civilian OB-GYN was one of the reasons why they were going to go into hiding before Sherry gave birth. That Sherry Birkin was pregnant might as well be public knowledge. An average hospital could never protect her identity and her unborn child from the people who would pay a lot of money to get their hands on a piece of Sherry and Jake mixed into one defenseless human being.

So, one last family gathering before Sherry disappeared and the next time they heard from her was within seven days of her projected due date to suit up and get ready to fight anyone who tried to take Sherry’s baby from her.

They got together at Rebecca’s house because it was the nicest. Her job didn’t require her to travel all over the world and stay away from home for weeks to months at a time, meaning that she had actually invested in her living space. Chris and Leon were just putting down roots and their house was currently missing a kitchen sink because Leon – not Chris – had accidentally destroyed the piping and the faucet had exploded. They also weren’t allowed to walk through their living room because an mishap where Chris tripped over a fold in the carpet created a crack in the floor. A team was removing the carpet and its underlying padding while also making sure that the living room did not collapse on them.

Claire had an apartment near TerraSave headquarters and Sherry and Jake were in the midst of setting up safe houses so that their child would always have a good home even if they had to move a lot.

Hence, they hunkered down in Rebecca’s living room for the baby shower. They had just wrapped up a _Wallace and Gromit_ movie and Jake and Rebecca were now battling to the death via _Mortal Kombat_ on the game system Claire had brought over. Sherry had a jar of peanut butter and a mountain of presents including diapers, formula, a crib, three different types of baby slings, two different kinds of strollers, a changing table, and a variety of blankets, infant clothing, and plushies.

She watched avidly as Rebecca as Cyrax destroyed Jake as Scorpion. She was visibly pleased and yet still made soft noises of dismay when Jake fumed to her that he would have won if he was using his own controller. Leon wasn’t generally into public displays of affection, but he had chosen to sit on Chris as Chris was sitting on the ground to save Rebecca’s furniture from testing their limits. Claire had promptly hopped up and sat on Chris’s shoulder like it was a perfectly natural thing to do.

“This is great!” Sherry said over a breakfast-style dinner because it was her day and as much as she tried to keep a healthy diet throughout her pregnancy, nothing made her happier than pancakes with hot sauce to fulfill her demonic cravings. “I’m so glad that we could all hang out. All of my moms and dads are the best!” she teased.

“I, uh…” Rebecca cleared her throat nervously. “I actually have one more gift, if that’s okay?”

“Oh?” Sherry was confused but smiled all the same. “I’m sure I’ll love it. Thank you, Rebecca.”

“It’s not for you, really? It does directly affects you, though.”

“Okay…?”

Rebecca got up and pulled Claire from Chris’s shoulder, centering them in the middle of the living room. Her hands were shaking and Leon could hear her gulp from his seat. Chris hunched over to whisper in his ear, “Do you think she’s going to…?”

Rebecca dropped to one knee, her hands pulling a jewelry box out of her vest pocket.

Claire’s hands flew to her face. From their position on the floor, they could only see Rebecca’s trembling smile, Claire’s back mostly facing them.

Chris gasped against his neck.

“Claire Redfield,” Rebecca whispered, like her voice just couldn’t get any louder, “You make me feel safe and loved, you remind me that I am _strong_ and, and _badass_ , and that I’m not alone. You make my favorite coffee from scratch, even though you think it’s disgusting. You never tell me that I have to dumb myself down to be understood or accepted, you just rise to the challenge of trying to understand me as I am. You don’t judge me for my nightmares because you have them too and seeing you makes my day so much brighter, like you’re my sun. I _love_ you so much, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Claire… will you marry me?” She opened the box.

Inside was a… a pill capsule on a chain. There was a ruby on the gold capsule, but it was still a capsule necklace.

Not the kind of engagement ring Leon would expect, but, considering that it was Rebecca, he thought it was rather fitting.

“Yes!” Claire cried. “Yes, yes, yes!” She dropped to her knees, pulled Rebecca into her arms, and kissed her like they were about to die. The capsule necklace fell to the ground while Chris and Sherry gave thunderous applause – almost literally thunderous when Chris was involved. Leon watched on fondly, also clapping. He was happy for his lifelong friend, incredibly so.

Jake scrunched his face up into an expression of impressed, ‘Alright, I respect that’, and gave a congratulatory whoop.

“Here, open, open it.” Rebecca picked the capsule up and handed it over to Claire. “Look inside.”

Claire, sniffling and laughing, did so. Inside the capsule was an even tinier vial.

“Whenever TerraSave sends you on missions where you may encounter strains of viruses we have already synthesized cures for, you can take the cure with you just in case. The wheat chain is one of the hardest chains to break due to its four strands of interlocking links. It won’t be stronger than a Tyrant, but it will outlast a lot of other things.”

“I love it,” Claire choked. “Put it on me, sweetie?”

Rebecca got up and came around Claire’s back to secure the necklace in place, Claire still sitting on the ground. Rebecca stood up and pulled Claire to her feet.

Instantly the redhead lifted Rebecca into her arms and kissed her again. “I love you,” Claire told Rebecca, who had squealed on liftoff and was now laughing as Claire bounced with her around the living room. “We’re getting married!”

“We’re getting married!” Rebecca chorused.

“They’re getting married!” Sherry sobbed into Jake’s shoulder.

Jake kissed the top of her head. “I know, supergirl.”

Chris lumbered to his feet, gently depositing Leon to the side. He went for the women with arms wide open and swept them both off their feet. “My baby sister’s getting married!”

Leon sat back down on Jake’s other side. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered to the other man. “I’m starting to think that we’re actually allowed to be happy.”

“Not any fucking more now that you’ve jinked it,” Jake snapped.

“Fuck you, I haven’t jinxed anything.”

“Fuck _you_ , you definitely have!”

“Fuck the _both_ of you!” Sherry hissed. “This is a beautiful moment and I am pregnant and I will feed the both of you to my unborn child if _you do not let me have this_!”

Leon and Jake both obediently shut the hell up and let her have this.

Leon figured he was right anyway. The world wasn’t suddenly a better place, but having his family and friends making lifelong commitments and setting down roots made him feel like _he_ was in a better place. He was well and truly happy.

He hadn’t imagined this kind of life for himself when he was a child. Now that he had it, he couldn’t imagine changing a single thing. He wouldn’t risk missing out on knowing a single person in the room.

Even Jake fucking Muller, that bastard child.


End file.
